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US-China space cooperation Low By Keith B. Richburg Saturday, January 22, 2011; 9:26 PM Washington Post Staff Writer Mistrust stalls U.S.-China space cooperation http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2011/01/21/AR2011012104480.html Sh
BEIJING - China's grand ambitions extend literally to the moon, with the country now embarked on a multi-pronged program to establish its own global navigational system, launch a space laboratory and put a Chinese astronaut on the moon within the next decade. The Obama administration views space as ripe territory for cooperation with China. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has called it one of four potential areas of "strategic dialogue," along with cybersecurity, missile defense and nuclear weapons. And President Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao vowed after their White House summit last week to "deepen dialogue and exchanges" in the field. But as China ramps up its space initiatives, the diplomatic talk of cooperation has so far found little traction. The Chinese leadership has shown scant interest in opening up the most sensitive details of its program, much of which is controlled by the People's Liberation Army (PLA). At the same time, Chinese scientists and space officials say that Washington's wariness of China's intentions in space, as well as U.S. bans on some high-technology exports, makes cooperation problematic. For now, the U.S.-China relationship in space appears to mirror the one on Earth - a still-dominant but fading superpower facing a new and ambitious rival, with suspicion on both sides. "What you have are two major powers, both of whom use space for military, civilian and commercial purposes," said Dean Cheng, a researcher with the Washington-based Heritage Foundation and an expert on the Chinese military and space program. NASA's human spaceflight program has been in flux in recent years, fueling particular concern among some U.S. observers about the challenge posed by China's initiatives in that area. There is "a lot of very wary, careful, mutual watching," Cheng said. Song Xiaojun, a military expert and commentator on China's CCTV, said that substantial cooperation in the space field is impossible without mutual trust. Achieving that, he said, "depends on whether the U.S. can put away its pride and treat China as a partner to cooperate on equal terms. But I don't see that happening in the near future, since the b But while China may still be an adolescent in terms of space exploration - launching its first astronaut in 2003 - it has made some notable strides in recent months and years, and plans seem on track for some major breakthroughs. On the day Hu left for his U.S. trip, Chinese news media reported the inauguration of a new program to train astronauts - called taikonauts here - for eventual deployment to the first Chinese space station, planned for 2015. As part of the project, two launches are planned for this year, that of an unmanned space module, called Tiangong-1, or "Heavenly Palace," by summer, and later an unmanned Shenzhou spacecraft that will attempt to dock with it. On a separate track, China is also working through a three-stage process for carrying out its first manned moon landing. The first stage was completed in October with the successful launch of a Chang'e-2 lunar orbiter. In 2012 or 2013, an unmanned landing craft is scheduled to take a rover to the moon to collect rock and soil samples. By 2020, according to the plan, a taikonaut could land on the moon.

Asteroid Mining key to finding E.T/ alien civilization would mine space too Speigel Apr 6, 2011 6:30 PM Lee Speigel Contributor for http://www.aolnews.com/2011/04/06/searching-for-an-et-scientists-say-look-for-signs-ofaliens-min/ Searching for an ET? Scientists Say Look for Signs of Aliens Mining Asteroids
After 50 years of searching the heavens with radio telescopes to try to contact alien life, so far the attempts of SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) scientists seem to have fallen on deaf ears. So is there another way to try to find aliens in our galactic neighborhood? Some scientists suggest looking for signs of ETs mining asteroids. Interesting concept, because it shouldn't be difficult to detect any outer space mining operations conducted by aliens, especially something that would kick up an unusual amount of dust in the process as they search for precious metals found in rocky asteroids. "The development of civilizations like ours into spacefaring, multiplanet entities requires significant raw materials to construct vehicles and habitats. Interplanetary debris, including asteroids and comets, may provide such a source of raw materials," write Duncan Forgan of the University of Edinburgh and Martin Elvis of the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. The two scientists have written a paper to be published in the International Journal of Astrobiology. "We present the hypothesis that extraterrestrial intelligences (ETIs) engaged in asteroid mining may be detectable from Earth." They speculate that any alien mining efforts would result in specific effects that might be seen by Earth-based technology. The first clue to a possible deep-space mining activity is that a chemical signature would result in the debris ring encircling a star. This debris "may be the leftovers from planet formation, and is expected to be

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common in planetary systems," Forgan and Elvis write. Second, an alien mining operation would cause detectable changes in the sizes of objects in those debris discs. Forgan and Elvis believe that these would be big clues for finding extraterrestrials. "If technological civilizations more advanced than ours exist in the galaxy ... and asteroid mining is a common activity which underpins their existence, then searching for signatures of targeted asteroid mining (or TAM) is an appropriate activity for SETI to undertake," the scientists suggest. It should be pointed out that they also realize their theory isn't the last word in detecting ETs. It's possible that some of these asteroid debris changes, whether physical or chemical, could be caused by the simple natural act of asteroids bumping or colliding into each other. "We cannot expect a conclusive detection of extraterrestrial intelligence by TAM -- what it can provide is a call to attention. Debris disc systems with unusual dust size distributions and locations ... provide astrobiologists with candidates for further study," the scientists write. The idea of going to asteroids to find usable materials is one that NASA is already implementing. The space agency is looking to send the first manned mission to a nearby asteroid in 2025.