Head of China's space programme says Hollywood film The Martian shows Americans want joint project

The blockbuster depicts the two countries working together to save a US astronaut

(YouTube)

Hollywood film The Martian is an indicator Nasa wants to work with China on space missions, according to a senior Chinese space official.

Despite Nasa being banned by the US government from working with its Chinese counterpart, the chief of the China National Space Administration expressed a wish to cooperate with the US on space projects, citing The Martian as evidence Nasa would be on board.

“When I saw the US film The Martian, which envisages China-US cooperation on a Mars rescue mission under emergency circumstances, it shows that our US counterparts very much hope to cooperate with us,” Reuters reported Mr Xu saying at a briefing.

“However, it’s very regrettable that, for reasons everyone is aware of, there are currently some impediments to cooperation.”

The hit film, starring Matt Damon, is about a US astronaut stuck on Mars after his team leaves him there, believing he is dead.

Faced with starvation, Damon’s botanist character manages to grow his own food and establish communications with Nasa, who launch a rescue mission using a Chinese rocket booster – cooperation Mr Xu would like to see replicated off-screen.

The difference in the countries’ space budgets is vast, with Chinese state media putting the country’s annual space spend at $2 billion, and the US government giving Nasa an annual budget of £16.8 billion in 2015, reaching around $18 billion by 2018.

The two countries did hold their first civil space talks last September, intended to share information about one another’s plans for space and boost trust between the space programmes, but joint projects have not been proposed.