China Outer Space Science, Technology and Explorations: News & Updates

[vi-va]

Has anyone posted this before?
chinas-change-4-probe-soft-lands-on-moons-far-side

CHANG'E 4 Chinese Moon Landing - Real Speed (2019/01/03)

 

[JSCh]

China's KZ-1A rocket launches two satellites
Source: Xinhua| 2019-08-31 15:47:35|Editor: Li Xia

JIUQUAN, Aug. 31 (Xinhua) -- Two satellites for technological experiments were sent into space by a Kuaizhou-1A, or KZ-1A, carrier rocket from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China on Saturday.

The rocket blasted off at 7:41 a.m. and sent the two satellites into their planned orbit.

Kuaizhou-1A, meaning speedy vessel, is a low-cost solid-fuel carrier rocket with high reliability and a short preparation period. The rocket, developed by a company under the China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation, is mainly used to launch low-orbit microsatellites.

Saturday's launch was the third mission of the KZ-1A rocket.

One of the newly launched satellites was developed by the Innovation Academy for Microsatellites of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), and will be used for microgravity technology experiments.

It will conduct on-orbit experiments on ultra-high precision control and measurement technologies under microgravity conditions, according to the CAS.

The technologies will lay a solid foundation for space science tasks and frontier basic science research, such as space-based gravitational wave detection and ultra-high precision inertial navigation, CAS said.

The other satellite, developed by Spacety Co., Ltd. (Changsha), a privately owned Chinese commercial space company, will be used to test solar sail technology.

The microgravity technology experiment satellite belongs to the second phase of a space science program of the CAS. During the first phase, a series of space science satellites have been sent into space, including the DAMPE to search for dark matter, the world's first quantum satellite and the HXMT, China's first X-ray space telescope.

In the coming three to four years, China plans to launch new space science satellites including the Gravitational Wave Electromagnetic Counterpart All-sky Monitor (GECAM), the Advanced Space-borne Solar Observatory (ASO-S), the Einstein-Probe (EP) and the Solar wind Magnetosphere Ionosphere Link Explorer (SMILE) to study gravitational waves, black holes, the relationship between the solar system and humanity, and the origin and evolution of the universe.

Note:
The "Taiji-1" satellite is the official name of the "microgravity technology experiment satellite" referred above, that was launched recently on 31st Aug 2019. It is part of China's "Project Taiji" that is similar to the European LISA (Laser Interferometer Space Antenna - Wikipedia) project. With scientific mission for detection and measurement of gravitational waves.

中科院之声
今天 15:42 来自 微博 weibo.com
【我国首颗空间引力波探测技术实验卫星—“太极一号”第一阶段在轨测试任务顺利完成】“太极一号”第一阶段在轨测试和数据分析结果表明，激光干涉仪位移测量精度达到百皮米量级（约为一个原子直径），引力参考传感器测量精度达到地球重力加速度的百亿分之一量级，微推进器推力分辨率达到亚微牛量级。“太极一号”实现了我国迄今为止最高精度的空间激光干涉测量，成功进行了我国首次在轨无拖曳控制技术试验，并在国际上首次实现了微牛级射频离子和双模霍尔电推进技术的在轨验证。

Translation:

Voice of the Chinese Academy of Sciences
Today 15:42 from Weibo

[China's first space gravitational wave detection technology experimental satellite - "Taiji-1" first stage in-orbit test mission successfully completed]

"Taiji-1" first stage in-orbit test and data analysis results show laser interferometer displacement measurement accuracy up to the order of one hundred picometers (about one atomic diameter), the gravitational reference sensor measurement accuracy reaches the order of per ten billionth of one g, and the micro thruster's thrust resolution reaches the sub-micro-Newton level. "Taiji-1" has achieved the highest precision of space laser interferometry measurement in China so far, successfully carried out the first in-orbit test of drag-free control technology in China, and also realized on-orbit verification for the first time in the world, micro-Newton level RF ion and dual mode Hall effect thruster technology.

 

[JSCh]

Chinese researchers conduct in situ measurement of lunar dust at Chang'e-3 landing site
Source: Xinhua| 2019-09-20 14:12:08|Editor: Li Xia

LANZHOU, Sept. 20 (Xinhua) -- Chinese researchers have successfully conducted an in situ measurement of lunar dust at the landing site of the country's Chang'e-3 probe.

Using a temperature-controlled sticky quartz crystal microbalance onboard the Chang'e-3 lander, researchers from the Lanzhou Institute of Physics determined that the total deposition mass at a height of 190 cm above the lunar surface during 12 lunar daytimes in the northern Mare Imbrium was about 0.0065 mg/cm2.

A paper on the research results has been published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets, a leading international journal in the area.

As lunar dust is regarded as the most crucial environmental problem on the Moon, the research results are "strategically important for future human and robotic lunar expeditions," according to the researchers.

The research can "provide a valuable reference for the protection of payloads from exposure to lunar dust particles for future lunar exploration missions," said the paper.

A part of the second phase of China's lunar exploration program, Chang'e-3 soft-landed on the moon's Sinus Iridium, or the Bay of Rainbows, on Dec. 14, 2013.

 

[JSCh]

Note:
The "Taiji-1" satellite is the official name of the "microgravity technology experiment satellite" referred above, that was launched recently on 31st Aug 2019. It is part of China's "Project Taiji" that is similar to the European LISA (Laser Interferometer Space Antenna - Wikipedia) project. With scientific mission for detection and measurement of gravitational waves.


Translation:

Voice of the Chinese Academy of Sciences
Today 15:42 from Weibo

[China's first space gravitational wave detection technology experimental satellite - "Taiji-1" first stage in-orbit test mission successfully completed]

"Taiji-1" first stage in-orbit test and data analysis results show laser interferometer displacement measurement accuracy up to the order of one hundred picometers (about one atomic diameter), the gravitational reference sensor measurement accuracy reaches the order of per ten billionth of one g, and the micro thruster's thrust resolution reaches the sub-micro-Newton level. "Taiji-1" has achieved the highest precision of space laser interferometry measurement in China so far, successfully carried out the first in-orbit test of drag-free control technology in China, and also realized on-orbit verification for the first time in the world, micro-Newton level RF ion and dual mode Hall effect thruster technology.

China Focus: Chinese satellite tests space-based gravitational wave detection technologies
Source: Xinhua| 2019-09-20 20:23:40|Editor: ZX

BEIJING, Sept. 20 (Xinhua) -- A recently-launched Chinese satellite has conducted in-orbit experiments on the key technologies related to space-based gravitational wave detection, the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) announced on Friday.

The satellite, sent into orbit on Aug. 31, is China's first such kind of satellite, and has completed its first stage tests in orbit, laying a solid foundation for future gravitational wave observation in space, said Xiangli Bin, vice president of CAS.

"This is the first step of China's space-based gravitational wave detection. But there is still a long way to go to realize detecting gravitational waves in space. Chinese scientists will continue to contribute Chinese wisdom to the exploration and human progress," Xiangli said.

The satellite has been named Taiji-1. As a Chinese term for the "supreme ultimate," Taiji is well-known as the black and white circular symbol representing yin and yang. The pattern of Taiji also resembles a binary star system composed by objects like neutron stars or black holes.

Gravitational waves are "ripples" in space-time caused by some of the most violent and energetic processes in the universe. Albert Einstein predicted the existence of gravitational waves in 1916 in his general theory of relativity.

The strongest gravitational waves are produced by catastrophic events such as colliding black holes, supernovae, coalescing neutron stars or white dwarf stars and possibly even the remnants of gravitational radiation created by the birth of the universe itself.

The first discovery of gravitational waves by the LIGO Collaboration in 2015 has opened a new window to observe the universe and encouraged scientists worldwide to accelerate their research.

CAS has announced the research program "Taiji" that will study gravitational waves from the merging of binary black holes and other celestial bodies.

Unlike the LIGO research conducted from a ground-based observatory, Taiji will conduct space-based detection on the gravitational waves with lower frequencies to observe celestial bodies with greater mass or located farther away in the universe, said Wu Yueliang, chief scientist of the Taiji program and an academician of CAS.

However, the gravitational wave signals from those celestial bodies are extremely weak, posing great challenges for detection. Scientists need to break through the limit of current precise measurement and control technology, Wu said.

Taiji-1 aims to test the key technologies such as high-precision and ultra-stable laser interferometer, gravitational reference sensor, ultra-high precision drag-free control and ultra-stable and ultra-static satellite platform, according to Wu.

Taiji-1 has realized China's most accurate space laser interference measurement and the first in-orbit drag-free control technology test. It also carried out electric propulsion technology experiments, Xiangli said.

The first-stage in-orbit test showed that the accuracy of displacement measurement of the laser interferometer on Taiji-1 could reach a 100-picometer order of magnitude, equivalent to the size of an atom.

"The accuracy of the gravitational reference sensor on the satellite reached ten billionths of the magnitude of the earth's gravitational acceleration, equivalent to the acceleration produced by an ant pushing the Taiji-1 satellite," Wu explained.

The thrust resolution of the micro-thruster on the satellite reached a scale equivalent to one-ten thousandth of the weight of a sesame grain, Wu said.

However, the technological requirements for detecting gravitational waves in space are much higher, scientists say.

CAS set a three-step strategy to implement the Taiji program. It took the research team about one year to develop Taiji-1, the first satellite of the program. It is expected to launch another two satellites in the second step after 2023, and three more satellites in the third step around 2033, according to Wu.

Over the past few years, China has sent a series of space science satellites into space, including the DAMPE to search for dark matter, the world's first quantum satellite and the HXMT, China's first X-ray space telescope.

In the coming three to four years, China plans to launch new space science satellites including the Gravitational Wave Electromagnetic Counterpart All-sky Monitor (GECAM), the Advanced Space-borne Solar Observatory (ASO-S), the Einstein-Probe (EP) and the Solar wind Magnetosphere Ionosphere Link Explorer (SMILE) to study gravitational waves, black holes, the relationship between the solar system and humanity and the origin and evolution of the universe.

 

[JSCh]

China航天
41分钟前
航天科技一院消息：目前该院已完成生产首件5米直径的锥底结构贮箱生产，并通过了相关的试验验证，将在我国新一代载人火箭上应用，为我国运载火箭结构轻质化设计提供了技术支撑O网页链接
41 minutes ago
First Academy of China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp. News: The Academy has completed the production of first 5-meter-diameter conical-bottom structure fuel tank, and passed relevant test verification, which will be used by China's new generation manned rocket. This technology would enable technical support to lighter weight structure design of China's launch vehicle.

 

[JSCh]

Breaking...
中国航天科技集团
27分钟前 来自 360安全浏览器
【喜迎国庆！长二丁成功发射云海一号02星

】刚刚！9月25日8时54分，我国在酒泉卫星发射中心用长征二号丁运载火箭，成功将云海一号02星送入预定轨道。云海一号02星主要用于大气海洋环境要素探测、空间环境探测、防灾减灾和科学实验等领域。本次发射是长征系列运载火箭的第313次飞行。向祖国母亲献礼！
China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp
27 minutes ago from 360 Safe Browser
[Happy National Day! CZ-2D successfully launched Yunhai-1 02 satellite [to power]] just! At 8:54 on September 25, China used the Long March II carrier rocket at Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center to successfully send Yunhai-1 02 into the orbit. Yunhai-1 02 is mainly used in the detection of atmospheric marine environmental elements, space environment detection, disaster prevention and mitigation and scientific experiments. This launch is the 313th flight of the Long March series of launch vehicles. Tribute to the motherland!

 

[JSCh]

China launches new satellite for environment detection
Source: Xinhua| 2019-09-25 09:27:59|Editor: ZX

JIUQUAN, Sept. 25 (Xinhua) -- China sent a new satellite into planned orbit from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China's Gobi Desert on Wednesday.

The Yunhai-1 02 satellite, launched on a Long March-2D carrier rocket at 8:54 a.m. (Beijing Time), will be mainly used for detecting the atmospheric and marine environment and space environment, as well as disaster control and other scientific experiments.

Both the satellite and the carrier rocket were developed by the Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology of the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation.

The launch was the 313th mission of the Long March carrier rocket series.

 

[JSCh]

NEWS * 24 SEPTEMBER 2019
Gigantic Chinese telescope opens to astronomers worldwide | Nature
FAST has superior sensitivity to detect cosmic phenomena, including fast radio bursts and pulsars.

​

FAST will enable highly sensitive measurements of astronomical phenomenon.Credit: Ou Dongqu/Xinhua/ZUMA

The world’s largest single-dish radio observatory is preparing to open to astronomers around the world, ushering in an era of exquisitely sensitive observations that could help in the hunt for gravitational waves and probe the mysterious fleeting blasts of radiation known as fast radio bursts.

The Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope (FAST) in southern China has just passed a series of technical and performance assessments, and the Chinese government is expected to give the observatory the final green light to begin full operations at a review meeting scheduled for next month. “We do not see any roadblocks for the remaining transition,” says Di Li, the chief scientist of FAST. “I feel both excited and relieved.”

The complex project has not been without challenges — it has a radical design and initially struggled to attract staff, in part because of its remote location. But the pay-off for science will be immense. FAST will collect radio waves from an area twice the size of the next-largest single-dish telescope, the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico.

The Chinese observatory’s massive size means that it can detect extremely faint radio-wave whispers from an array of sources across the Universe, such as the spinning cores of dead stars, known as pulsars, and hydrogen in distant galaxies. It will also explore a frontier in radioastronomy — using radio waves to locate exoplanets, which may harbour extraterrestrial life.

Since testing began in 2016, only Chinese scientists have been able to lead projects studying the telescope’s preliminary data. But now, observation time will be accessible to researchers from around the world, says Zhiqiang Shen, director of the Shanghai Astronomical Observatory and co-chair of the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ FAST supervisory committee.

“I’m super excited to be able to use the telescope,” says Maura McLaughlin, a radioastronomer at West Virginia University in Morgantown, who wants to use FAST to study pulsars, including hunting for them in galaxies outside the Milky Way, that are too faint to see with current telescopes.

During the testing phase, the telescope discovered more than 100 pulsars.

Eye in the sky
The 1.2-billion-yuan (US$171-million) telescope, also known as Tianyan or ‘Eye of Heaven’, took half a decade to build in the remote Dawodang depression in the Guizhou province of southwest China. Its 500-metre-wide dish is made up of around 4,400 individual aluminium panels that more than 2,000 mechanical winches tilt and manoeuvre to focus on different areas of the sky. Although it sees less of the sky than some other cutting-edge radio telescopes, and has lower resolution than multidish arrays, FAST’s size makes it uniquely sensitive, says Li.

In August and September, the instrument detected hundreds of bursts from a repeating fast radio burst (FRB) source known as 121102. Many of these bursts were too faint to be perceived by other telescopes, says Li. “This is very exciting news,” says Yunfan Gerry Zhang, who studies FRBs at the University of California, Berkeley. No one knows what causes the mysterious bursts, but “the more pulses we have, the more we can learn about them”, he says.

FAST examines only a tiny fraction of the sky at any one time, making it unlikely to discover many new FRBs, which are fleeting and occur in seemingly random locations. But the telescope’s “impressive sensitivity” will be useful for following up on sources in detail, says Laura Spitler, an astronomer at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, Germany. Repeat observations could allow scientists to learn about the environment from which an FRB emerged, and to determine whether the blasts vary in energy or recur with any set pattern.

FAST will also boost the efforts of an international collaboration that is trying to spot ripples in space-time as they sweep through the Galaxy, says McLaughlin. The International Pulsar Timing Array is using radio telescopes around the world to monitor the regular emissions from pulsars, looking for distortions that would reveal the passing of these low-frequency gravitational waves. By the 2030s, FAST should have racked up enough sensitive measurements to study individual sources of such waves, such as collisions of supermassive black holes, says McLaughlin. “That’s where FAST is really going to shine,” she says.

Li says that he is particularly excited about the study of planets outside the Solar System. No exoplanets have yet been conclusively detected by their radio emissions, but FAST’s ability to spot faint, polarized waves might allow it to find the first examples, says Li. Polarized radio signals might come from planets with magnetic fields that, if similar to the one on Earth, could protect potential sources of life against radiation and keep the planets’ atmospheres attached.

Identifying a planet in FAST’s wide beam is a challenge, because they are so faint and small. But Li’s team wants to boost the telescope’s performance by adding 36 dishes, each 5 metres wide. Although the dishes are relatively cheap, off-the-shelf products, together they will improve FAST’s spatial resolution by 100 times, he says.

Li hopes that FAST’s telescope operations will soon move from near the remote site to a $23-million data-processing centre being built in the city of Guiyang. He expects that the move to a major city will help attract more technical and engineering staff.

Now the team’s biggest hurdle is working out how to store and process the enormous amount of data that the telescope will churn out. The team are negotiating with the Chinese government to get additional funding for more data storage. “A successful review will definitely help,” he says.

doi: 10.1038/d41586-019-02790-3

 

[JSCh]

环球时报
今天 15:39 来自 微博 weibo.com
【远望21号火箭运输船即将完成适应性改造 为重大任务做最后冲刺

】远望21号火箭运输船负责人今日向外界透露，为更好地执行即将开展的一系列海上运输任务，9月初远望21号火箭运输船进厂进行改造，随着后续任务时间的日益临近，船员和工厂师傅开启了“白加黑”和“五加二”的工作模式，据了解，远望21号火箭运输船将于本月底完成改造，靠回中国卫星海上测控部母港，为即将开始的火箭运输任务做最后准备。（高超、亓创）
Global Times
Today 15:39 from Weibo
[Yuanwang No. 21 rocket transport ship is about to complete the adaptive transformation to make the final sprint for a major mission[憧憬]]

The head of the Yuanwang-21 rocket transport ship revealed to the outside world today that in order to better carry out the upcoming series of maritime transport missions, Yuanwang-21 rocket transport ship entered the shipyard for renovation in early September. With the approaching task time approaching, the crew and factory masters opened the working mode of “day plus night” and “five plus two”. It is understood that Yuanwang-21 rocket transport ship will be renovated at the end of this month, and will return to the home port of the China Satellite Maritime Monitoring and Control Department to make final preparations for the upcoming rocket transportation mission. (Gao Chao, Yu Chuang)

 

[JSCh]

太空精酿
今天 03:31 来自 微博 weibo.com
2019世界航天发射赛程过去大半，目前来看，中美俄三足鼎立，世界所有其他国家在旁边看热闹
Over half the year has gone, the space launch schedule looks to be dominated by China, Russia and USA.

 

[Beast]

太空精酿
今天 03:31 来自 微博 weibo.com
2019世界航天发射赛程过去大半，目前来看，中美俄三足鼎立，世界所有其他国家在旁边看热闹
Over half the year has gone, the space launch schedule looks to be dominated by China, Russia and USA.

Most Russia launch are ISS resupply or astronauts.

环球时报
今天 15:39 来自 微博 weibo.com
【远望21号火箭运输船即将完成适应性改造 为重大任务做最后冲刺

】远望21号火箭运输船负责人今日向外界透露，为更好地执行即将开展的一系列海上运输任务，9月初远望21号火箭运输船进厂进行改造，随着后续任务时间的日益临近，船员和工厂师傅开启了“白加黑”和“五加二”的工作模式，据了解，远望21号火箭运输船将于本月底完成改造，靠回中国卫星海上测控部母港，为即将开始的火箭运输任务做最后准备。（高超、亓创）
Global Times
Today 15:39 from Weibo
[Yuanwang No. 21 rocket transport ship is about to complete the adaptive transformation to make the final sprint for a major mission[憧憬]]

The head of the Yuanwang-21 rocket transport ship revealed to the outside world today that in order to better carry out the upcoming series of maritime transport missions, Yuanwang-21 rocket transport ship entered the shipyard for renovation in early September. With the approaching task time approaching, the crew and factory masters opened the working mode of “day plus night” and “five plus two”. It is understood that Yuanwang-21 rocket transport ship will be renovated at the end of this month, and will return to the home port of the China Satellite Maritime Monitoring and Control Department to make final preparations for the upcoming rocket transportation mission. (Gao Chao, Yu Chuang)

What rocket launched? LM-5 rocket?

 

[JSCh]

What rocket launched? LM-5 rocket?

Yuanwang-21 could only be used for LM-5 or LM-7 transport. There is no news on plan of new LM-7 launch, so likely either LM-5 or LM-5B would be transport to Wenchang.

 

[Galactic Penguin SST]

2019: A Chinese Space Odyssey

19 September 2019

China's lunar exploration program has released images that give us a glimpse of the mysterious artifact discovered on the far side of the moon.

Yutu-2, the lunar rover for China's Chang'e-4 mission, grabbed attention last month after its drive team spotted something unusual while roving close to a small crater. The Chinese-language science outreach publication Our Space, which announced the findings on Aug. 17, used the term "胶状物" (jiao zhuang wu), which can be translated as "gel-like." This notion sparked wide interest and speculation among lunar scientists.

Scientists have now gotten a look at that curious material, thanks to a post (Chinese) released over the weekend by Our Space via its WeChat social media account. Along with new images of the stuff on the moon, the post details how the Yutu-2 team carefully approached the crater in order to analyze the specimen, despite risks.

https://archive.is/Qbl8b/00e5f24e86fcb240dcf1ed31c36f312bfd27f881.jpg ; https://archive.is/Qbl8b/78de481794a7f5b8c4cc4a524f2d268299b22cde/scr.png ; https://archive.is/3Bttz/919b5402474730e16a6f0ce6ad57df9f6d7d1be3 ; http://web.archive.org/web/20190927...x_fmt=jpeg&tp=webp&wxfrom=5&wx_lazy=1&wx_co=1 ; http://archive.is/3Bttz ; http://web.archive.org/web/20190927142824/https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/c7edQwOcN0gL9lQuylWRCA
▲ 1. China's Yutu-2 moon rover captured this image from the edge of the small crater where it found a mysterious artifact.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1176434971965181952

https://twitter.com/f99600406/status/1176434971965181952
▲ 1. 2019: A Chinese Space Odyssey.


http://web.archive.org/web/20190927142824/https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/c7edQwOcN0gL9lQuylWRCA
http://archive.is/3Bttz

 

[JSCh]

Chinese satellite "Monkey King" sheds new light on origin of cosmic rays
Source: Xinhua| 2019-09-28 10:06:16|Editor: Xiaoxia

NANJING, Sept. 28 (Xinhua) -- A Chinese satellite, nicknamed Monkey King, is not only searching for the invisible dark matter, but also exploring the origin of the cosmic rays, high energy particles that travel through space at nearly the speed of light.

An international research team has conducted a precise measurement of the spectrum of protons, the most abundant component of cosmic rays, in an energy range from 40 GeV to 100 TeV (one TeV is one trillion electron volts, corresponding to one trillion times the energy of visible light) with China's Dark Matter Particle Explorer (DAMPE), also known as Wukong or Monkey King.

The measured spectrum shows that the proton flux increases at hundreds of billions electron volts and then drops at around 14 TeV, indicating the existence of a new spectral feature of cosmic rays, said Chang Jin, the principal investigator of DAMPE and the director of the Purple Mountain Observatory (PMO) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

"The new finding is of great importance in helping scientists understand the source and acceleration of cosmic rays in the Milky Way," said Yuan Qiang, a researcher at PMO.

The result, based on DAMPE's data collected in its first two and a half years, was published online in the latest issue of Science Advances.

 

[JSCh]

40-meter Radio Telescope of Yunnan Observatories Achieves eVLBI Observation---Chinese Academy of Sciences
Sep 29, 2019

The Radio Astronomy and VLBI research group from Yunnan Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) operated the 40-meter radio telescope on September 17, 2019, to participate in broadband network transmission and real-time correlation observations of the European Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) network, also called eVLBI observation.

This observation successfully participated in the previous test observations and the follow-up scientific observations, and transmitted a large amount of long-baseline data to Chinese and foreign astronomers.

VLBI is an astronomical technique that combines radio signals from radio telescopes around the world for positioning and high-resolution imaging of deep space celestial objects and distant black holes.

Under the support of ZHANG Hongyu from the Computer Network and Information Center (CNIC) of CAS and YANG Yuecheng from Yunnan Observatories of CAS from May to early September 2019, the Radio Astronomy and VLBI research group have completed installation of the optical cable equipment and upgraded network equipment, and then tested the network.

Compared with the traditional VLBI observation methods which are disk recording and correlation processing after several weeks, the eVLBI observation reduces a lot of time for astronomers to wait for data correlation, which is extremely beneficial to the structural observation of various temporary sources with an outbreak duration of several days. It can promote the development of time domain astronomy.

In this eVLBI observation, the Kunming station of Yunnan Observatories transmitted the data to the correlation center in the Netherlands with a stable rate of about 1 gigabit per second via CNIC in Beijing.

The 40-meter telescope undertakes the VLBI and data transmission work of the China's Lunar Exploration Program. It is also an important station of many international VLBI organizations, and often participates in international VLBI joint observations.

The success of this eVLBI observation greatly improved the ability of the Kunming 40-meter telescope to perform real-time observations, and laid the foundation for a higher-speed real-time observation of 2-6 Gbps (2-6 gigabits per second).

In the future, the Radio Astronomy and VLBI research Group will continue to upgrade the network hardware, to achieve super high-speed network real-time observation as soon as possible.