Nearly five years ago, China put a spacecraft on the Moon that scooped up bits of lunar soil and brought them back to Earth. Now, tiny portions of that regolith are being distributed to research organizations around the world -- but NASA is off limits. A US law passed in 2011 forbids the China National Space Administration (CNSA) from sharing the precious resource with America's only governmental space research entity.
The law is called the Wolf Amendment, and it's the brainchild of former Virginia Senator Frank Wolf. In 2011, Wolf argued that NASA's cooperation with the CNSA would eventually lead to the accidental leakage of US scientific or technological secrets to China. He proposed a ban on using federal funds for the direct, bilateral transfer of knowledge or assets between NASA and the CNSA. The ban was tacked on to the federal budget and, thanks to annual votes from Congress, it's been in effect ever since.
Many scientific, legal, and security scholars have criticized Congress's decision to keep the Wolf Amendment around, arguing that it "proves contrary to its own intents and actually increase[s] the risk of war in space," in Harvard International Review's case. That's because science has traditionally served as an arena for mutual effort and benefit; if anything, it normally provides an opportunity for opposing nations to put aside extraneous goals and help each other out. The Wolf Amendment, then, arguably adds tension to what might otherwise be an olive branch.
That's the case with Chang'e 5, which gathered enough lunar regolith to distribute bits to researchers in France, Germany, Japan, Pakistan, the UK, and the US. The two American organizations to receive samples are Brown University and Stony Brook University; each had to secure non-federal funding specifically for the loan and related research to be eligible.
Already, Chang'e 5 samples have uncovered some major Moon secrets. In 2022, scientists found helium-3 (a promising fuel for nuclear fusion) in the lander's dust collection. In 2023, they identified signs of a water reservoir in glass impact beads formed by asteroid impacts; months later, that finding was bolstered by yet more evidence of water in Chang'e 5 samples. By sharing the samples internationally, the CNSA is enabling a broader range of scientists -- with an equally broad range of resources, knowledge, and backgrounds -- to pull back the lunar curtain.
"It's honestly a huge honor," Frédéric Moynier, a cosmochemist at the Paris Institute of Planetary Physics, told Science upon notification that he'd been selected. "China is setting a very positive example for scientific cooperation."