US reviewing space cooperation with China after anti-satellite test

This was gonna be a post on the order of "funny how this is leading to negotiations", but decided to include something else too.

First the negotiations angle.

The United States has said it is reevaluating possible space cooperation with China, including joint moon exploration, following Beijing's recent anti-satellite weapon test.

China's test of a satellite-killing missile last month was "inconsistent" with an agreement between US President George W. Bush and Chinese President Hu Jintao to forge cooperation in the civil space area, the State Department said.

"Any future civil space cooperation with China will need to be evaluated within the context of China's ASAT (anti-satellite) test," department spokesman Edgar Vasquez told AFP.

No real surprise there. And then these two paragraphs.

Washington has protested the test both to China's ambassador in Washington and to the foreign ministry in Beijing and has asked for an explanation of exactly what occurred.

It is concerned that the test, which destroyed one of China's own orbiting satellites with a ballistic missile, has scattered debris in space that could endanger the manned International Space Station and other orbiting satellites.

OK. Seems to make sense. A bunch of junk flying around probably isn't particularly safe for useful equipment flying around too. Of course the universe hasn't supplied its own junk like, oh I don't know, meteorites?

Ah, but then the irony kicks in.

The test made China only the third country in the world -- after the United States and the former Soviet Union -- to down an object in space.

Washington and Moscow stopped the practice in 1985, in part over concerns about the debris left in space.

Do what we say, not what we've done.

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