ARS Technica by Eric Berger - Jun 4, 2017
The reuse of a Dragon spacecraft captured most of the headlines after Saturday's SpaceX launch of its Falcon 9 rocket on a supply run to the International Space Station. But this particular Dragon made history in another way: by carrying a Chinese science experiment to the station for the first time. US-China space cooperation has been a taboo until now.
The experiment will study the effects of space radiation on DNA, specifically the rate at which DNA mutates in the space environment, which could have implications for long-duration human spaceflight. Led by Deng Yulin of the Beijing Institute of Technology, the experiment will run for about 30 days on the space station before it returns to Earth aboard the Dragon spacecraft.
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Deng's team has paid about $200,000 to the US company NanoRacks for delivery to the station, storage inside the company's racks, and collection of data from the experiment. Although China has a small role in the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, a large physics experiment outside the station, this is the first Chinese-led research done on the US side of the station.
That's significant, as Congress has barred NASA from working directly with China since 2011, when then U.S. Rep. Frank Wolf added a prohibition to NASA's budget. He was worried that the Chinese government might steal US spaceflight secrets, and had concerns about the country's human rights record. The Chinese researcher, Deng, reportedly is not connected to the country's ruling communist party, and typically publishes his research in Western journals. It is expected that this research, too, will be shared with the global scientific community.
"One can place as much political significance on this as one wants, but for us this is simply a customer," said Jeff Manber, the chief executive officer of NanoRacks, which has become the leading commercial provider of access to research opportunities on the space station. "We believe a commercial pathway affords an opportunity for dialogue without the necessity of symbolism."
More:
https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/06/saturdays-spacex-launch-carried-a-secret-payload-a-chinese-experiment/
