China, Netherlands launch lunar satellite to listen to universes origins
News & Trends •
china and the netherlands early monday successfully launched a lunar satellite which will listen for evidence of the big bang the chain event that triggered the origins of the universe1 xinhua news agency reported the satellite named queqiao launched aboard a long march-4c rocket that blasted off at 528 a.m. 21.28 gmt from chinas xichang satellite launch center in the countrys south-western province of sichuan according to the china national space administration cnsa1 the launch is a key step for china to realise its goal of being the first country to send a probe to soft-land on and rove the far side of the moon xinhua quoted zhang lihua manager of the relay satellite project as saying1 about 25 minutes after liftoff the satellite separated from the rocket and entered an earth-moon transfer orbit xinhua reported1 queqiao is carrying the netherlands-china low-frequency explorer which will listen for low frequency radio signals that carry clues to the time a few hundred million years after the bang when clouds of hydrogen were spawning the universes first stars according to science news website space.com1 such frequencies are blocked by the earths atmosphere according to the netherlands institute for radio astronomy which built the explorer1 queqiao will be positioned 64000 km from the farthest side of the moon and will alsobe used in further lunar exploration by the china national space administration1 besides the explorerqueqiaowill also launch two additional satellites longjiang-i and longjiang-ii for chinese experiments according to space.com1 tdpanan1