Leonard David's INSIDE OUTER SPACE

Credit: CMSE/Wei Yan Juan

European Space Agency (ESA) director, Jean-Jacques Dordain and Yu Tongjie, Director of the China Manned Space Agency, met May 27 to continue and promote strategic cooperation on long-term objectives and implementation steps.

The two organizations are fleshing out the signing of cooperative agreements and scoping out more than a dozen specific areas of technical talks, according to the China Manned Space Engineering (CMSE) Office.

Credit: CMSE/Wei Yan Juan

The discussions, according to CMSE, are opening the door to manned space-European Union cooperation, and promote the establishment of a European Ministerial Conference on China.

Cooperative areas

Last year, in a December 11 meeting in Beijing, ESA and the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) signed an agreement to work together in the human spaceflight arena.

Under that ESA/CMSA agreement, three potential cooperation areas were identified:

— Implementation of joint scientific experiments and studies in different fields by utilizing in-orbit infrastructures(such as the International Space Station and the Chinese Space Station) and ground facilities, including space life and physical sciences, microgravity research, space biology and medicine, and technology research;

— Astronaut selection, training, medical operations and astronaut flights;

— Space infrastructure cooperation in human exploration of Low Earth Orbit (LEO) and beyond.