Bush offers China cooperation on space exploration

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -
President George W. Bush offered Chinese President
Hu Jintao on Thursday greater U.S. cooperation on space exploration and planned to send the head of
NASA to China later this year.

Bush was "trying to deepen the relationship between our two societies and our two cultures," said Dennis Wilder, an Asia specialist at the White House national security council.

"There are some things that the Chinese also have in terms of sensor technologies and information that we are interested in, in terms of global climate and other issues," Wilder said.

NASA Administrator Michael Griffin would probably go to China later this year "to begin to consult on the subject of space exploration and where we might have common interests and where we might begin to work together as the two nations on the Earth with the most ambitious space programs in the 21st century," Wilder said.

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