China and Russia plan to sign an agreement in October on joint space exploration from 2018 and 2022, which would benefit both nations particularly in manned and future missions to the moon, CGTN reported on Monday.
"China's and Russia's respective cooperation with some Western countries in aerospace sometimes is hindered by trust issue as aeronautic and space developments are closely related to military fields," Wang Ya'nan, deputy editor of Aerospace Knowledge magazine, told the Global Times on Tuesday.
The joint space exploration between China and Russia would be easier as the two shared deeper mutual trust, Wang noted
The October agreement between China and Russia will be the first to cover a partnership spanning five years, a period that allows for more ambitious plans and goals to be achieved, CGTN said.
Wang said that China and Russia need each other to extend space exploration.
"Russia's space industry has faced various problems, especially brain drain and shortage of funds after the collapse of the Soviet Union. And its role in the development of international space station has become replaceable," Wang said.
According to a report on the news site, thepaper.cn, there are some difficulties, including intellectual property that may hinder he cooperation.
If the cooperation has not cover carrier rockets and China's space station, it would not be called a "deeper cooperation," read the report.
However, Russian experts remained optimistic about the bilateral cooperation and said that, with the joint efforts, China and Russia could get ahead of NASA on aerospace development, thepaper.cn reported.
Wang said that China-Russia joint space exploration may also be different from the US and Western countries as the projects may attach importance to converting aeronautic technologies into practical applications to drive economic development.
Glavkosmos declined to comment when reached by the Global Times on Tuesday.
This article, written by Liu Xin, was originally published in the Global Times.