(Photo : Wikimedia Commons/Expedition 20 Crew, NASA)
China has attracted new partners in Europe as it outpaces the United States in space exploration. And just recently, it launched a new satellite along with France to explore the cosmos.
France And China Launch Satellite To Explore the Universe
The 930 kg (2,050-pound) satellite, which was developed by China and France and carried four instruments-two French and two Chinese-launched on a Chinese Long March 2C rocket on Saturday at approximately 3 p.m. (07:00 GMT) from a base in Xichang, in the province of Sichuan in southwest China, according to state broadcaster CCTV.
The Space Variable Objects Monitor (SVOM), created by engineers in both nations, will look for gamma-ray bursts, the light from which has come to Earth after billions of light years.
Gamma-ray bursts typically follow the fusion of compact stars or the explosion of massive stars, which are stars larger than the sun by a factor of 20.
An energy burst from the incredibly light cosmic beams is more than that of a billion suns.
Gamma-ray bursts are so strong that they can eradicate extraterrestrial civilization. According to astronomy professor Dr. Frederick Walter's morbid alien theory, humans still don't find signs of alien life because they were already destroyed by GRBs.
According to Ore Gottlieb, an astronomer at the Center for Computational Astrophysics at the Flatiron Institute in New York, seeing them is like "looking back in time, as the light from these objects takes a long time to reach us." This was stated to the AFP news agency.
According to Gottlieb, SVOM has the ability to solve a number of puzzles in the field of [gamma-ray bursts, or GRBs], one of which is the detection of the universe's most remote GRBs, which coincide with the first GRBs.
The cosmos was still in its infancy 630 million years after the Big Bang when the most distant bursts found to yet were created.
The satellite will transmit its data back to observatories when it is 625 kilometers (388 miles) above Earth in orbit. SVOM will notify users as soon as it notices a burst.
According to analysts, the data may contribute to a better understanding of space composition and the dynamics of gas clouds and other galaxies. The primary issue is that gamma-ray bursts are quite brief, which puts scientists in a race against time to get data.
More About SVOM
The Space-based multi-band astronomical Variable Objects Monitor (SVOM) mission is a Franco-Chinese probe devoted to studying gamma-ray bursts, the furthest-reaching stellar explosions. The main contributors were the National Astronomical Observatory (NAO) and the Beijing High Energy Institute (IHEP) for China, and the Institute of Research into the Fundamental Laws of the Universe (Irfu) and the Research Institute of Astrophysics and Planetology (IRAP) for France. The outcome is the product of a collaboration between the two national space agencies, CNSA (China National Space Administration) and Centre National d'études spatiales.
It consists of four main instruments -- two from France (ECLAIRS and MXT) and two from China (GRM and VT). With a 450-kilogram payload, the satellite has a total weight of 930 kg. It will be positioned in a low-Earth orbit with a 96-minute orbital period, a 30-degree inclination, and a height of 625 kilometers.
The space observations are complemented by a terrestrial probe using the wide-field camera GWAC (Ground-based Wide Angle Camera) to examine the prompt emission of part of the burst detected from the ground in the visible range and the robotic telescopes GFT (Ground to Follow-up Telescopes) designed to precisely measure the gamma-ray burst's coordinates.
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