Saturday’s SpaceX launch carried a surprise payload—a Chinese experiment

US company has ensured that Chinese experiment cannot transfer tech from station.

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.

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-US 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."

No viruses

The Chinese experiment has gotten some play in that country's media, but it received no promotion from NASA or SpaceX during the run-up to Saturday's launch. That is partly because, while key members of Congress OK'd the commercial opportunity, the space agency did not want to politicize the gesture.

One concession made to Congress was that NanoRacks had to ensure that the experiment would not allow any transfer of technology between NASA and China. The experiment will remain confined within the NanoRacks platform on the station and is designed so that it will not interface in any way with the station's information technology systems. This additional step was done to allay any Congressional concerns about tech transfer and the introduction of computer viruses onto the station.

In recent years, key NASA officials have expressed a desire to work more openly with China, as its space program is making significant strides in launch technology, and it has an ambitious program to explore the Moon. "It won't happen under my watch, but some future NASA administrator will be sitting down and having a conversation with his or her Chinese counterpart," NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said before he left as the agency's administrator earlier this year.

Under the optimistic view of engagement with China, the country is seen as a wealthy partner that could bring not only ideas to a human spaceflight program, but also a sustained source of funding. Moreover, just as space has been stabilizing the tie between the United States and Russia in recent years, a US-China partnership in space could moderate geopolitical tensions on Earth. But critics, and not just those in Congress, worry that any joint program would have NASA give away too much information and gain little in return.