Russia-China Space Exploration Deal Nearly Done

While SpaceX is currently dominating the news in terms of space travel and exploration right now, this doesn’t mean that other countries are sitting on their laurels. Russia and China are close to signing a deal where both countries would cooperate in several fields of space exploration. This could lead to better and faster advancements in the field than the competition between nations in decades past.

According to Sputnik News, the signing of the agreement is scheduled for October of this year. The deal would also involve multiple areas of space exploration.

“The deal would cover five areas, including lunar and deep space exploration, satellite systems, space debris research and Earth remote sensing,” the report reads.

It would seem that China is not the only country that Russia is making deals with regarding space exploration either. According to TASS, the Russian news agency, several Southeast Asian countries will also be on board several projects.

“Apart from China, Glavkosmos is also considering the possibilities of space cooperation with India, Brazil, South Africa, Nicaragua, Myanmar, Chile, Peru and Armenia and their involvement in Russian projects,” TASS’ report reads.

While this is reminiscent of the Space Race back in the 60s between the former Soviet Union and the US, quite a few things about this latest event are different. For one thing, Russia is not competing with the US government, but with private space agencies. Both SpaceX and Blue Origin are the only relevant players in the field right now.

More to the point, Russia sees cooperation with countries as a huge boon to boost its space exploration efforts instead of the closed-off attitude that it had in the past, Futurism reports. Finally, while there is some tension between the governments of Russia and the US right now, it’s not directly influencing the efforts by to get ahead in space exploration. Basically, this is the good Space Race.