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World’s largest steerable radio telescope to play a timely role in China’s space aspirations
- Jingdong Radio Telescope will help keep a watchful eye on pulsars to ensure Earth stays on time
- Bold new project will be a giant leap for China’s role in radio astronomy
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Ling Xinin Beijing
China is set to start building what will be the planet’s largest steerable radio telescope, with a massive dish 120 metres (394 feet) in diameter to provide high-precision time keeping, as well as a cutting-edge tool for fundamental research.
The 350 million-yuan (US$48 million) Jingdong Radio Telescope (JRT) will be located in the mountains of southern China’s Yunnan province.
Once it is operating in 2026, it will measure the passage of time by monitoring highly regular radio pulses emitted by pulsars, a type of fast-spinning neutron star known as the most accurate clock in the universe.
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Along with the Five-hundred-metre Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) in Guizhou province, the Jingdong facility will help China develop a pulsar-based timescale that is independent of – and more accurate than – the international atomic time service the world has relied on, according to Wang Min, the project’s chief scientist.
Wang, from the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Yunnan Observatories in Kunming, said the project would also boost China’s leadership in radio astronomy and provide pulsar-based positioning and navigation for future Chinese spacecraft exploring deep space.
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Pulsars are extremely dense, magnetised neutron stars that form when massive stars collapse at the end of their life. According to Nasa, a teaspoon of a pulsar on Earth would weigh as much as a mountain.
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