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NASA Chief Meets Top Chinese Officials
Beijing (AFP) Sep 23, 2006 NASA chief Michael Griffin met with top Chinese space officials here Sunday and toured facilities during the first visit to China by a US space agency head, his staff said. Griffin, who arrived here Saturday on a six-day visit to China, held talks Sunday with his Chinese counterpart Sun Laiyan, head of the China National Space Administration. Earlier he toured the Chinese Academy of Space Technology and met with its president Yuan Jiayun. NASA spokeswoman Melissa Mathews said Griffin was in China to establish contact and learn about the country's space programme. "Generally speaking the administrator is coming here to meet his counterpart and to try to understand China and to get to know the space programme here so it is really an introductory kind of meeting," she said. On Monday Griffin is scheduled to meet with China's minister of science and technology and to deliver a speech to the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Plans for Griffin to visit China's rocket launch centre in the Gobi desert "did not work out," Mathews said, adding that on Tuesday he would leave Beijing for Shanghai and return from there Thursday to the United States. China has long sought closer cooperation with the United States on space but Washington has been lukewarm because of concerns about the involvement of China's military in its space programme. China entered the exclusive rank of top space nations in 2003 when it sent up its first manned mission, joining the United States and Russia. In 2005 it launched a second orbiting mission with two astronauts, and also hopes to send an unmanned probe to the Moon by 2010. China spends 500 million dollars a year on its space programmes, according to official figures. NASA's proposed budget for 2007 is nearly 17 billion dollars.
Source: Agence France-Presse Related Links Read More About the Chinese Space Program
Seed Breeding Satellite Returns To China
Chengdu (XNA) Sep 24, 2006China's seed-breeding satellite, Shijian-8, successfully landed in Sichuan Province, southwest China, at 10:43 a.m. Beijing time on Sunday after a 15-day flight in space. The recoverable satellite was launched from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the northwest China desert on Sept. 9. |
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