U.S. halts China space ventures

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The Bush administration has suspended plans to develop space ventures with China, including joint exploration of the moon, in reaction to Beijing's Jan. 11 test of an anti-satellite weapon that left orbiting debris threatening U.S. and foreign satellites.

National Aeronautics and Space Administration spokesman Jason Sharp said the weapon test undermined an agreement reached between President Bush and Chinese President Hu Jintao during an April summit.

"We believe China's development and testing of such weapons is inconsistent with the constructive relationship that our presidents have outlined, including on civil space cooperation," Mr. Sharp said.

He said there were "some initial discussions looking at where there were mutual interests where we could cooperate with the Chinese," but there are no plans for future discussions. The two presidents had hoped to work on joint moon exploration and space-debris avoidance.

Bush administration officials said the suspension is meant to signal U.S. displeasure with the anti-satellite weapon (ASAT) test, as well as Beijing's failure to provide an explanation for its space arms program.

"Clearly it makes it more difficult to go down the path of cooperation when they're testing ASAT weapons," one official said.

China fired a missile on Jan. 11 that released a nonexplosive warhead that destroyed a Chinese weather satellite 530 miles above the Earth by ramming it at high speed. Thousands of pieces of the destroyed satellite are in orbit and could damage or destroy some of the hundreds of U.S. and foreign satellites, U.S. officials said.

In Beijing yesterday, amid growing criticism over the ASAT test, a Chinese spokesman repeated Beijing's past call for an agreement banning space weapons, a proposal that has been rejected by the Bush administration.

"Since other countries care about this question and are opposed to weaponization of space and an arms race in space, then let us join hands to realize this goal," said Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu when asked about U.S. and Japanese criticism of the test.

Both China and Russia in 2002 proposed adopting a treaty to ban deployment of space weapons during a session of the U.N. Conference on Disarmament in Geneva. Until last year, U.S. space cooperation with China was curbed over China's human rights abuses, including the 1989 Tiananmen massacre, and national security worries in the Pentagon that space technology transfers would boost China's military.