Enlarge / US Vice President Kamala Harris shakes hands with Josef Aschbacher, director general of the European Space Agency, right, during a tour of Artemis II and Artemis III mission hardware at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, in 2022. (credit: Alex Perez/Sipa/Bloomberg via Getty Images) Nearly six years ago the European Space Agency surprised its longtime spaceflight partners at NASA, as well as diplomatic officials at the White House, with an announcement that some of its astronauts were training alongside Chinese astronauts.