China is readying a significant project that not only augments the nation’s astronomical research agenda but bolsters the usage of the country’s space station complex.
And there are bragging rights related to China’s star-studded enterprise.
The spacecraft is known as Xuntian, generally known as the Chinese Survey Space Telescope or the Chinese Space Station Telescope (CSST). The name “Xuntian” could be literally translated as “surveying the sky” or “survey of the heavens.”
Scheduled for launch next yr, the bus-sized CSST houses a two-meter (6.6 foot) diameter primary mirror. This ultraviolet-optical space telescope is to co-orbit with the country’s Tiangong space station. It has a nominal mission lifetime of 10 years, however the observatory’s space duties may very well be prolonged.
Related: China unveils plans for the most important optical telescope in Asia
Xuntian is designed to outdo NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. This massive orbiting facility is to orbit near China’s space station where it could be overhauled sometimes by Chinese spacewalkers.
Lin Xiqiang, deputy director of the China Manned Space Agency, has stated that the Xuntian in-orbit observatory is predicted to make breakthroughs in cosmology, dark matter and dark energy, the Milky Way galaxy and other neighboring galaxies, star formation and evolution and exoplanets.
That is a tall order.
Lin said that the high-resolution telescope will take deep-field survey observations with an area of 17,500 square degrees, in addition to make tremendous observations of several types of celestial bodies. Xuntian is endowed with a 2.5 billion pixel camera.
Field of view
Expected to be hurled into Earth orbit next yr atop a Long March 5B rocket, Xuntian can obtain high-definition panoramic views of the universe having roughly the identical spatial resolution because the Hubble Space Telescope. Nevertheless, China’s orbiting eye has a field of view greater than 300 times larger than Hubble. The sphere of view is the realm of the heavens a telescope can see at one time.
In an interview last yr with China’s state-run Xinhua news agency, Li Ran, project scientist of the CSST Scientific Data Reduction System, used the analogy of imaging a flock of sheep to indicate CSST’s capabilities.
“Hubble may even see a sheep however the CSST sees 1000’s, all at the identical resolution,” Li said.
Furthermore, this super-scope will stay in the identical orbit because the space station for long-term independent flight and observations. It’s designed to temporally dock with the space station for hands-on supply, maintenance and upgrading by Tiangong astronauts, Lin said.
High tech
In an interview with China Central Television (CCTV), Zhou Jianping, chief designer of the China manned space program, also heralded Xuntian’s planned capabilities and contributions.
“The Xuntian telescope has been a very powerful scientific project because the launch of our country’s space station program. It’s a scientific facility that Chinese astronomical community has eagerly anticipated, and a scientific facility representing the state-level high tech in astronomy,” Zhou said.
The telescope can be probably the most advanced when it comes to its ability to supply images within the ultraviolet spectrum amongst all the continuing telescope research projects on the earth, added Zhou. “It’s expected to greatly boost the event of astronomy, advance our country’s astronomy research to a world leading level and help Chinese astronomers develop into a number one force on this field.”
First-generation
In response to Li Chengyuan of the School of Physics and Astronomy at China’s Sun Yat-sen University, the China Space Station Telescope and NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope are sensitive to the same wavelength interval.
But Xuntian covers a field of view which is about 5 to eight times wider than that of Hubble, Li emphasized last yr within the journal Research in Astronomy and Astrophysics.
The “first-generation” Xuntian space telescope consists of 5 remark instruments, including the Xuntian module, the terahertz module, the multichannel imager, the integral field spectrograph and the extrasolar planetary imaging coronagraph.
The Xuntian module, a camera with a large field of view, will take up major remark time.
Test and assembly
During its normal observations, the space telescope will fly independently in the identical orbit as China’s space station, but at a faraway distance.
“We’re still developing the prototype sample. Currently, we have accomplished the event of all subsystems, components, and units, and we’re preparing for the test after they’re assembled,” said Xu Shuyan, chief designer of the Xuntian optical facility and researcher from the National Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
“After this, we are going to start the event of the telescope sample, and begin the research of the flying parts. Then we are going to conduct the joint test with the Xuntian platform and the test on the launch base, before it’s launched,” Xu told CCTV.
World-class center
In the large picture world of expanding the frontiers of space astronomy it’s essential look no further than the achievements of the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Maryland. STScI is a multi-mission science operations center for NASA’s flagship observatories and a world-class astronomical research center.
STScI is home-base for wow-making science programs utilizing the James Webb Space Telescope, the Hubble Space Telescope and will likely be the science operations center for the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope launching within the mid-2020s.
The institute is positioned on the campus of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, and is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy for NASA.
Open questions
While Chinese space agency leaders are already boasting concerning the capabilities of Xuntian, some researchers have their doubts.
“For facilities open to the international scientific community, reminiscent of Hubble or Webb, we offer significant documentation and software in order that researchers can plan outstanding science programs,” said Tom Brown, an astronomer and head of the Hubble Mission Office at STScI.
“In contrast, not lots is publicly known concerning the specific capabilities of the China Space Station Telescope, so it’s difficult to evaluate how it can enable similar investigations,” Brown told Space.com.
From the little that is understood, Brown said it looks like China’s Space Station Telescope may have a bigger field of view than Hubble, but a smaller mirror, with less collecting area and spatial resolution.
The spectral resolution appears to be significantly lower than that available on Hubble, and CSST doesn’t extend into the far-ultraviolet, that’s, below 200 nanometers.
“There are numerous open questions at this point,” said Brown, including if the space-based telescope could be successfully launched, if it could be maintained in an area station environment, how observing time will likely be peer reviewed and awarded and the way the info will likely be calibrated.
“Hubble continues to steer the sector in all of the ways one measures the price of a world-class research facility, pursuing ground-breaking projects in all areas of astrophysics,” Brown said. “I’m curious to see how the China Space Station Telescope story unfolds.”