Quote Originally Posted by mjs1973
LOL, that line alone made me laugh.
I'm glad it tickled you Michael.

The US, the UK, and most of the other space faring nations (Italy, France, Japan, India, etc) readily share data with the whole world. Everyone knows where we're going, what we're doing, and in the event of having spacecraft crash into something (be it the moon or a comet) word is usually sent out for everyone to watch, record, and analyze the event.

No one had a clue the Chinese were going to do this, and if they had, you can bet that a whole battery of telescopes would have been watching to glean whatever scientific information they could. The Chinese do not play well with others.