"China is currently the first contributor to our activities in terms of voluntary contributions. This is quite important. It's a sign of the strong interest of China in collaborating with us, opening up to the entire world the possibility of utilizing your facilities," said Di Pippo, who hoped to see more cooperation projects in the future.

Maurer viewed the cooperation between China and the EU as win-win. He said China has a lot of advantages such as its own rockets, capsules and a space station.

Europe, on the other hand, has abundant experience in long-duration missions in space "which can be brought into our cooperation to make it develop more efficiently," Maurer said.

Wimmer-Schweingruber spoke highly of China's openness, saying "to compensate the weakness of one country with the strength of another, that's how we work scientifically."

After collaborating on satellites that monitor earthquakes and their effects, "we now hope to collaborate more intensively on their new space station, that could offer us important flight opportunities for our astronauts, but also for the development of experiments and innovative technologies," said Piero Benvenuti, commissioner of the Italian Space Agency.

Woerner said the ESA is also discussing using the Chinese manned spacecraft Shenzhou to send European astronauts into space in the future. "Although it is not on the agenda, it's a possibility," he said.

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