China and the Chinese National Space Administration have been doing impressive work in the field of astronomy, especially in recent years. While China’s Tiangong Space Station is expected to be operational this year, the country’s media outlet CGTN shared new information about the Xuntian Space Telescope.
It will offer a 300 times greater field of view
Xuntian, which will reportedly weigh more than 10 tons and have a span of two meters, will consist of five observing apparatuses, including a terahertz module, multi-channel imager, integrated field spectrograph and extrasolar planet imaging coronagraph. However, the new telescope, which will observe the universe with a camera of 2.5 billion pixels, will have a field of view 300 times larger than Hubble.
Chinese researchers think the new telescope will measure the positions, shapes and brightness of nearly a billion galaxies, which could help explain how they evolved. As it is known, the Hubble Space Telescope has been orbiting the Earth for more than 31 years. The new telescope will be able to survey roughly 40 percent of the sky during its nearly 10-year mission.
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Unlike NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, Xuntian will be close enough to Earth for maintenance and orbit close to the Chinese space station.
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