Sino-French satellite launched
A cutting-edge astronomical spacecraft jointly developed by China and France was launched into its preset orbit on Saturday afternoon to capture and observe gamma-ray bursts — the most distant explosions of stars — the China National Space Administration said.
The Space Variable Objects Monitor spacecraft is a combination of small telescopes. It was placed in a low-Earth orbit by a Chinese Long March 2C carrier rocket launched at 3 pm from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in Sichuan province, the administration said in a news release.
The 930-kilogram spacecraft was built by the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Innovation Academy for Microsatellites in Shanghai. It carries four scientific payloads: the ECLAIRs coded mask camera and the Microchannel X-ray Telescope made by French scientists, and the Gamma-ray Burst Monitor and the Visible Telescope built by the Chinese team.
The best spacecraft ever built for multi-band comprehensive observation of gamma-ray bursts, it is expected to play an important role in space-based astronomical explorations, the CNSA said.
Gamma-ray bursts, immensely energetic explosions in distant galaxies, are the brightest and most extreme explosive events in the universe and the most energetic and luminous electromagnetic events since the Big Bang.
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