China Starts Targeting Ceres, a Little Planet Claimed to Be Habitable

JAKARTA - China is starting to look at Planet Ceres and is planning to build a giant telescope to look for clues about the nature of dark matter.

The mission has so far attracted more than 20 candidates vying for funding to continue their studies under the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) Strategic Priority on Space Science (SPP), also known as the New Horizons Program and is currently undergoing evaluation.

The selected missions then have the potential to be developed into missions over the next decade in 2025 to 2030.

The proposals from the 20 candidates contained designs for the Very Large Area Gamma Ray Space Telescope (VLAST), the Outer Space Weather program, the Ceres exploration program, and the Gravity Experimental Satellite.

Most of the proposals will focus on the Ceres and VLAST missions, in which China will carry a ground-penetrating radar as the primary payload on the orbiter, and delve deeper into the dwarf planet in both its underground seas and activity. volcanic geology.

Ceres is a dwarf or dwarf planet, the only dwarf planet in the Solar System. Making Ceres the largest object in the asteroid belt, the region between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.

Recognized as a marine world, Ceres is claimed to have geological activity and is claimed to be a habitable planet. The only spacecraft to visit Ceres so far has been NASA's Dawn mission in 2007. With the launch of the China mission, it will provide further insight into Ceres.

While VLAST will seek to detect dark matter signals in gamma-ray emission, following on from the DAMPE mission launched in 2015. VLAST will also perform gamma-ray astronomy in the mega volt and giga-electron ranges as well as perform cosmic ray measurements.

VLAST is expected to increase the sensitivity of the Fermi Large Area Telescope by a factor of 10. The observatory weighing about 16 metric tons will have to be launched on a Long March 5 rocket.

China also wants to develop mid-range missions along with the Chang'e lunar and Tianwen space missions and could add extra space exploration depending on mission selection.

The proposed CAS mission is also separate from, and in addition to, the Chang'e and Tianwen missions, which are under the auspices of China's National Space Administration (CNSA).