China is expected to launch the Xuntian Telescope by the end of 2023, which will have a field of view 300 times wider than NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope.
China Ready for its flagship launch telescope, which is expected to begin scientific operations around 2024 at the China Space Station. It’s called China Space station Telescope (CSST), or Xuntian means ‘surveillance of the sky’, intended to carry out sky surveys, take general maps or general images of the sky. Well, it would be so different from two famous NASA telescopes, the James Webb Space Telescope and the Hubble Space TelescopeCGTN newspaper suggested.
Recently, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope revealed its first scientific images from its perch about 1.5 million kilometers (one million miles) from Earth at Lagrange Point 2. In contrast, the telescope Xuntian telescope will be close to Earth as it will orbit the Chinese space station. That means it will be relatively close to the planet for easy servicing and maintenance. The report suggests that CSST is expected to have a nominal mission life of 10 years, well, this could be extended based on request.
China’s Xuntian telescope beats Hubble Space Telescope
NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope It’s been about 32 years since its debut. During its long service, Hubble discovered new galaxies, stars, planets, comets, asteroids and more. On the other hand, the Xuntian telescope will fly near the China Space Station. Moreover, the most interesting part is that Xuntian will retain the same 2.5 billion pixel resolution camera but with a better field of view. To be precise, Xuntian has a field of view 300 times larger than that of the Hubble Space Telescope, CGTN report mention. With this huge field of view, it will be able to survey about 40% of the sky during its 10 years of operation.
The report quotes Zhan Hu, principal scientist of the Xuntian optical facility, as saying: “Xuntian is possibly the largest space telescope for astronomy in the near-ultraviolet and visible range of the last decade. 2035. It is expected to be launched by the end of 2023.
