China Announces Its Radar Technology for Space Weather Forecast After Releasing First Batch of Results

China unveiled its radar technology for space weather forecasting ​​on Monday after releasing the first batch of results it gathered.

China Announces Radar Technology For Space Weather Forecast

According to state-sponsored media, the Super Dual Auroral Radar Network (SuperDARN) is a network of organizations that operate equipment to monitor near-Earth space. The announcement was made at an international workshop in Beijing on Monday, where the first batch of data from the space weather forecast and warning system was presented.

The Chinese system consists of a network of high-frequency, mid-latitude radars located in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, and the Jilin Province of China. It was built by the National Space Science Center (NSSC) and finished construction in October.

According to NSSC, the network's detection range is 4,000 km from south to north and more than 12,000 km from east to west. It could reportedly "achieve large-scale continuous detection of ionospheric irregularities in mid and high latitudes of the Asian sector."

It continuously scans the Earth's atmosphere for anomalies in the ionosphere, where spacecraft and space stations are located, and a high concentration of charged particles. According to China's authorities, the radars were made feasible by "new breakthroughs in high-frequency coherent scattering radar technology."

Part of China's "mega project" of extensive ground-based monitoring systems. The radar technology is a part of the second phase of the Meridian Project.

Per China's claims, real-time data exchange and sharing with databases in the UK and Canada are planned, and the new radar technology "is expected to join the SuperDARN."

A worldwide collaboration could possibly benefit the global human race. Beijing's announcements, however, do not provide a timeline for data sharing or interoperability, so it might take some time before the world understands China's perspective on space weather in the current icy diplomatic climate.

China To Build High-Energy Photon Source

Aside from making huge progress in space exploration, China is building Asia's first synchrotron light source. China is constructing a $665 million High Energy Photon Source (HEPS), which will be the first of its kind in Asia and place the nation among the elite few in the world with fourth-generation synchrotron light sources.

At the MAX IV Laboratory, a synchrotron radiation facility in Lund, Sweden, one of HEPS's competitors for brightness, Pedro Fernandes Tavares, a scientist in charge of the accelerator division, states that "it will certainly be a state-of-the-art installation that will cater for outstanding science."

Tavares claims that earlier synchrotrons make it nearly impossible to investigate tiny protein crystals since they require large, difficult-to-produce samples. Nonetheless, HEPS's hard X-rays will be powerful enough to thoroughly examine even the smallest materials. In addition, studies that would take days at previous facilities can be completed quickly in the new synchrotron.

Fourteen beamlines will be available for researchers to explore energy, condensed matter physics, novel materials, and biomedicine when HEPS opens in 2025. HEPS expects to support up to 90 beamlines in the future. According to Ye Tao, a beamline scientist working on HEPS at the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Institute of High Energy Physics (IHEP) in Beijing, the circular facility will " impact every scientific field, except maths."

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