China will search for habitable planets outside the solar system from 2030 using a system of telescopes, announced representatives of the Asian country’s space program.
The project, called “Miyin” and which is still in the development phase, aims to “find another ‘Earth,'” said Zhang Xuhui, executive vice president of the Chinese Academy of Aerospace Sciences and Technological Innovation, during an event in the city. from Hefei (east), which is hosting a space conference this week.
“Despite being at an early stage, the Miyin program is ambitious and significant. We will accelerate its maturity through a series of test flights that will allow us to make scientific discoveries on the fly,” said Zhang, quoted by the local newspaper.Global Times.
The Chinese space station will be the base in 2025 for experiments in optical interference technology, also called interferometry, a technique used to study distant celestial objects.
The following year will see the launch of an experimental satellite that will perform an interferometric detection to verify the operation of the technology that will serve as the basis for the Miyin, explained the expert.
The Miyin project
By 2030, the telescope array will be ready, after which the project will be able to carry out precise measurements and observations of celestial objects, revealing the features of the solar system and other planetary systems.
The information collected will allow us to describe the morphology and physical properties of objects in our space neighborhood and to know the “distribution in the solar system of molecular components such as water,” Zhang reported.
It is expected that the Miyin will also contribute to “clarifying the process of formation of the habitable conditions of the Earth and the origin of life.”
In recent years, Beijing has invested heavily in its space program and has achieved milestones such as the successful landing of a probe on the far side of the Moon in January 2019, an achievement that no country had achieved to date.
In addition, the Chinese space station, called Tiangong, will likely become the world’s only space station if the International Space Station, a US-led initiative to which China is barred from access due to military ties to its space program, is retire that year as scheduled.
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