China recently announced its first international cooperative project of a joint Chinese-Russian exploration of Mars that has received attention from the governments of both countries. On March 26, 2007, with the Chinese and Russian heads of state as witnesses, the director of the China National Space Administration, Sun Laiyan, and the head of the Russian Space Agency, Anatoly Perminov, both signed the “Cooperative Agreement between the China National Space Administration and the Russian Space Agency on joint Chinese-Russian exploration of Mars.”