Inside China Tech: FAST keeps big eye on space after Arecibo collapse

  • FAST – short for Five-hundred-metre Aperture Spherical Telescope – has a dish as large as 30 football fields
  • Dubbed ‘Sky Eye’ by Chinese authorities, FAST is expected to be open to foreign scientists from next year

A woman takes photos of the Five-hundred-metre Aperture Spherical Telescope, also known as FAST. The world’s largest full dish radio telescope is located in Pingtang County, in southwest China’s Guizhou province. Photo: Xinhua

Hello, this is Bien Perez from the South China Morning Post’s Technology desk, with a wrap of our leading stories this week.

Puerto Rico’s massive space telescope, the Arecibo Observatory, has ended 57 years of astronomical discoveries after sustaining severe damage since August of this year. The 900-tonne instrument platform of the telescope, which was featured in the 1995 James Bond film GoldenEye starring Pierce Brosnan, collapsed on Tuesday.
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