The times when only two states on Earth were engaged in space exploration are long over. Today, countries such as Israel and India have entered the space race. And China, sometimes called the world's third-largest space superpower after the United States and Russia, has achieved amazing results. So, after three years of complex construction, the PRC invites astronomers from around the world to conduct research using a new radio telescope with a diameter of 500 meters called the Five Hundred-Meter Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope (FAST). Now the Chinese astronomical observatory is the largest in the world.
China's Space Program
You may not know this, but China's space program dates back to 1956, and China's first satellite launched into outer space in the 1970s. Today, the PRC launches interplanetary stations (IPS) into space to the satellite of our planet, has a wide variety of launch vehicles, as well as almost all types of applied satellites. Over the past 40 years, more than a hundred satellites have been launched into space as part of the Chinese space program. China is also developing a spacecraft for flight to Mars.
Nature magazine recently wrote that after three years of grueling work, China is launching the world's largest single-dish radio telescope. And one cannot help but rejoice at this. After all, science and scientific research are what unite people all over the world, erasing boundaries between countries. And when it comes to new opportunities for exploring our cosmic home, full of secrets and amazing discoveries, it is simply impossible to hide the joy.
According to Nature, FAST will scan twice the area of the Arecibo Observatory radio telescope in Puerto Rico. The Chinese radio telescope is capable of detecting even the weakest radio waves emanating from celestial objects such as pulsars and entire galaxies. Experts also do not rule out that it can be used to detect distant worlds on which life may exist.
The largest radio telescope on Earth
The world's largest astronomical observatory is located remotely in southwest China, which made its construction much more difficult. Construction began in 2011. In five years, engineers were able to build a 500-meter dish consisting of 4,400 aluminum panels. The cost of building the largest radio telescope on our planet was $180 million.
Note that before the opening of this astronomical observatory, the largest radio telescope in the world was located at the Arecibo Astronomical Observatory in Puerto Rico, which was built in 1963. The diameter of the Arecibo radio telescope is 304.8 meters. Thanks to his work, a huge number of important astronomical discoveries were made. In 2017, Hurricane Maria broke the 29-meter antenna of the radio telescope. Its debris severely damaged the main and auxiliary mirrors of the telescope, but the observatory soon resumed its work.
The Chinese radio telescope can significantly speed up the discovery of a wide variety of cosmic phenomena. For example, FAST discovered more than 100 pulsars during testing alone. According to NASA, until 2017, scientists knew of only 2,000 pulsars. It’s scary to imagine how many more pulsars this radio telescope will discover in the near future. He is also responsible for detecting hundreds of fast radio bursts emanating from an unknown source. FAST is able to pick up even weak signals that other radio telescopes miss.
Scientists also note that the largest radio telescope in the world will be able to detect distant exoplanets only by their radio emission. We hope this will happen in the very near future. At the same time, we should not forget that working with FAST is not without problems - for example, the main problem is storing the incredibly large amount of data that this radio telescope will collect in the next few years.