Scientific satellites prepared for launch
Print Edition
A SERIES of scientific satellites will be launched later this year and next, the National Space Science Center under the Chinese Academy of Sciences said.
The first of the series, a dark matter particle explorer, will be launched from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China at the end of the year, said Wu Ji, the center’s director.
All of the major tests and experiments have been completed, and a mission control center for scientific satellites has been set up in Huairou, a northern suburb of Beijing, he said.
The dark matter probe will observe the direction, energy and charge of high-energy particles in space, said Chang Jin, chief scientist of the project.
It will have the widest observation spectrum of any such probe in the world.
Dark matter is one of the most important mysteries of physics. Scientists believe in its existence based on the law of universal gravitation, but have never directly detected it.
China will launch a satellite for quantum science experiments next year.
“It’s difficult to develop the payload of the satellite. We have overcome many difficulties in making the optical instrument. We are confident of launching it in the first half of next year,” Wu said.
A retrievable scientific research satellite, SJ-10, will also be launched in the first half of 2016. It will carry out research in microgravity and space life science to provide scientific support to manned space missions.
The SJ-10 project is jointly developed by 11 institutes of the CAS and six Chinese universities in cooperation with the ESA and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. Next year’s launch schedule also includes a hard X-ray telescope, which will observe black holes, neutron stars and other phenomena based on their X-ray and gamma ray emissions.
Wu said that since the space era began in 1957, the United States and the former Soviet Union have made 90 percent of the “firsts.” In recent years, Europe and Japan have also made great progress.
“But we didn’t hear any Chinese voice in those great missions. China is the world’s second-largest economy, and a major player in space. We should not only be the user of space knowledge, we should also be the creator of space knowledge,” Wu said.
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