The head of China's space agency will visit NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe next week, a move one US expert says could mean increased cooperation between the two countries.

Sean O'Keefe says the meeting with the Chinese National Space Agency Administrator Sun Laiyan isn't a major milestone, but he says it's the beginning of an "evolutionary" process which may develop into cooperation.

The meeting comes barely two weeks after Chinese representatives joined a NASA workshop in Washington on international space cooperation, and just over a year after China's first successful human space flight, which concluded on October 16 last year.

China has never worked directly with the US space program and is not among the nations working on the International Space Station.

But there are strong signals the Chinese want to cooperate with NASA.

(CRI November 24, 2004)