9,000 people to make way for huge radio telescope
Print Edition
MORE than 9,000 people in southwest China’s Guizhou Province will be relocated before the completion of the world’s largest radio telescope in September, local authorities said yesterday.
Development of the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope (FAST), which sits between hills in the rural region, began in March 2011 with an investment of 1.2 billion yuan (US$184.3 million).
On completion, the telescope will be the world’s largest of its kind, overtaking Puerto Rico’s Arecibo Observatory, which is just 300 meters in diameter.
The relocation program was proposed last year at the Guizhou Provincial Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, according to its secretary-general Li Yuecheng.
Anyone living within 5 kilometers of the telescope will be relocated to create “a sound electromagnetic wave environment,” Li said.
The move will affect 9,110 residents, he said. Each person will receive compensation of 12,000 yuan, with some ethnic minority families getting an additional 10,000 yuan in housing support, the official said.
Wu Xiangping, director-general of the Chinese Astronomical Society, said earlier that the telescope’s high level of sensitivity “will help us to search for intelligent life outside of the galaxy.”
Meanwhile, Chinese scientists said they have developed a system to measure the leak rate for a vacuum environment to be used in the country’s three-step lunar exploration program.
According to researchers at the Lanzhou Institute of Physics under the China Academy of Space Technology, the system will help scientists figure out a better way to preserve samples from the moon.
“The third step of the lunar exploration project involves taking samples from the surface of the moon back to Earth,” said Li Detian, the chief scientist on the research team.
“The samples will be packed in a vacuum environment. The accuracy of measuring the finest leak in a vacuum capsule will have direct impact on the research result of the samples.”
Cheng Yongjun, a member of the team, said the measurement system will ensure a similar vacuum environment as found on the moon for the samples.
It will also make sure that the 2 kilogram samples remain uncontaminated on their way back to Earth, and prevent them from being affected by any kind of environment change, including extremely high and low temperatures.
China has a three-step moon exploration project: orbiting, landing and return. The Chang’e-5 lunar probe is scheduled to be launched in 2017, which will fulfill the final stage of the project.
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