forum.kosmonautix.cz

Flying to space usually is more successful if we have international cooperation. And looking into the past, the International Space Station program was a huge success because it brought together former enemies. Before the Cold War, we had Soviet Union on one side and the US on the other side. And now these nations are working together in space and the European Space Agency is kind of the glue in this international cooperation.

And that led us to the expectation that maybe we can also bring in China into this international spacefaring family. And so we started cooperating with China in 2012 up to the point where we had Chinese taikonauts, Chinese astronauts training in Europe and we had two European astronauts and I was one of them training in China. That was in 2017. Unfortunately today the situation is not as open as it was in the past. And so now we have the ambition to fly to the Moon and we either is part of the Artemis program. And nowadays our member states told us we should focus on the cooperation to fly to the moon together with NASA. And so the cooperation with China is currently on hold.