China To Use World Largest Radio Telescope 'FAST' For Space Research

Publish On: 13 Jan, 2020 12:33 AM | Updated   |   Arnima  

Beijing: China will use the world's largest radio telescope for space research for the hunt of extraterrestrial life. The nation has official opened the operations of the telescope on Saturday.

The telescope is called Five-Hundred-Meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) and has the size of 30 football fields and has been named 'Sky Eye' bye the Chinese scientists. This equipment has received national approval to start its operations.

According to the scientists the telescope finished its construction in 2016 but has been undergoing debugging and tests since then. Now the equipment is ready to be used, they stated.

FAST's Chief Engineer Jiang Peng, "The telescope's trial operations had so far been reliable and stable, and that its sensitivity was more than 2.5 times that of the world's second-largest telescope."

Beijing has also planned to launch constructions of its own manned space station next year. The country has decided to catch up with Russia and the US to become a major space power by 2030.