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China’s Scientific Satellites to Enter Uncharted Territory

Source:http://english.cas.cn/newsroom/news   Date:2015-10-28

A series of scientific satellites, including one to probe dark matter, will be launched later this year and next year, said WU Ji, director of the National Space Science Center under the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).
The development of four scientific satellites is going well, WU said recently at an event to mark the 10th anniversary of cooperation between China’s Double Star space mission and the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Cluster mission to investigate the earth's magnetosphere.
The first of the series, the dark matter particle explorer, will be launched from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China at the end of this year. All 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, WU said.
China will also launch a satellite for quantum science experiments next year. “It’s very 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 next year. It will carry out research in microgravity and space life science to provide scientific support to manned space missions.
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.(Cutdown)

This image provided by the Illustris Collaboration in May 2014 shows dark matter density overlaid with the gas velocity field in a simulation of the evolution of the universe since the Big Bang. (AP Photo/Illustris Collaboration)


China's dark-matter particle explorer satellite under development (China Features)