Istanbul Gelisim University IISBF SosyoCom: Monthly Events and News Bulletin (Issue 5, May 2021)   

Abstract

China Builds its Own Space Telescope! China is preparing to participate in the competition in the space exploration field by building its system. Developed as the Chinese Space Station Telescope, Xuntian will be China's first large telescope in space. Xuntian is seen as a rival to the Hubble Space Telescope, which was put into orbit in 1990 and used as one of the most important space probes. The probe, which will have a capacity 300 times more than Hubble can view, is planned to be launched for orbit in 2024. Xuntian means "eye of the universe". The most important feature of the developed telescope is its diameter. The telescope will have a lens of 6.6 feet about 2 meters in diameter and will observe the sky using a massive 2.5 billion pixel camera. The expected service life of the telescope is 10 years. It will spend about 60% of its time on sky research, and it will do astronomical research in its remaining time. Xuntian will be designed to be able to be installed in space and docked to the surface. Its advanced optical system, wide field of view and high resolution mean it can picturize objects in more detail. It will have a better performance in discovering unknown celestial bodies. In addition, filters with different radiation characteristics such as near ultraviolet, near-infrared and terahertz will enable greater accuracy in detecting the colours of celestial bodies. It will have five separate tools to use while observing the images or spectrum of celestial bodies. It will enable to conduct in-depth research in the scientific discourse on subjects like cosmology, dark energy, dark matter, black holes, galaxies and stars. The extensive data collected in its 10-year study is expected to be used in almost all research fields of modern astronomy.