China successfully launches the Space Variable Objects Monitor, a space science satellite co-developed by China and France, to its preset orbit at the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in southwest China’s Sichuan Province on June 22, 2024. Photo: CCTV News
China on Saturday successfully launched the Space Variable Objects Monitor (SVOM), a space science satellite co-developed by China and France, into its preset orbit, which mission insiders and space observers said on Sunday was a signature example of cooperation in the space between a major Western country and an Asian power.
The Global Times has learned from the China National Space Administration (CNSA) that China launched the SVOM on the Long March 2C launch vehicle at the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in southwest China’s Sichuan Province on Saturday at 3 p.m.
This satellite is currently the most powerful satellite in the world for comprehensive multi-band observation of gamma-ray bursts and will play an important role in scientific discoveries in the field of space astronomy, including gamma-ray burst (GRB) research, the CNSA explained in a statement to the Global Times.
The SVOM project is a collaboration established in 2014 and the second satellite-related collaboration between China and France, after the China-France Oceanography Satellite that was launched into orbit and became operational in 2018.
The SVOM is designed to detect short-lived and extremely violent cosmic explosions known as gamma-ray bursts by detecting high-energy electromagnetic radiation in the X-ray and gamma-ray range.
To achieve this goal, Chinese scientists and engineers have developed a few instruments for the satellite. These are the Gamma-Ray Monitor to measure the spectrum of emissions from GRBs and the Visible Telescope, which will look for light emitted in optical wavelengths immediately after a gamma-ray burst.
Meanwhile, the French side provided the ECLAIR telescope and the microchannel X-ray telescope on board the SVOM.
The satellite platform on which the parts are mounted was also developed by China. The platform will provide high stability and autonomous control for the satellite during its search for weak signals in the universe.
The satellite is also supported by China’s BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS), which can use the BDS short message services and the French VHF network, allowing the SVOM to transmit a warning signal back to the ground station within five minutes. it detects a GRB event, to notify large aperture ground-based telescopes around the world, as well as other GRB satellite such as the SWIFT to observe such an event in its entirety, Global Times of the developers of the project heard.
SVOM’s Chinese team told the Global Times that they looked forward to more cooperation with their French colleagues in the future.
France has rich experience in space astronomy, oceanography and atmospheric monitoring. We hope to deepen our collaboration with them in those areas and even in the exploration of planets beyond the solar system, a team member said.
This year marks the 60th anniversary of diplomatic relations between China and France. Over the past six decades, China and France have engaged in practical cooperation in the space field, the CNSA said.
The successful implementation of the China-France SVOM project serves as an excellent example of deep aerospace cooperation between the two countries, the CNSA said, while listing other milestone cooperation achieved in recent years, such as the CFOSat launched in 2018 was launched and the French radon project. detector on board the Chinese Chang’e-6 that landed on the far side of the moon in 2024.
Western media immediately pointed out that the SVOM project stems from a partnership between the French and Chinese space agencies and other scientific and technical groups from both countries. However, space cooperation at such a level between the West and China is seen as “fairly unusual, especially since the United States banned all cooperation between NASA and Beijing in 2011,” the AFP reported.
“US concerns about technology transfer have deterred US allies from working with the Chinese, but it does happen occasionally,” Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in the US, told AFP.
So while SVOM is “by no means unique,” it remains “significant” in the context of space cooperation between China and the West, McDowell added.
Chinese space observers said the SVOM served as a recent notable example of high-level space cooperation between a Western power and China, demonstrating China’s openness in space matters, in stark contrast to US domestic legislation such as the Wolf Amendment that normal conditions prevents. exchanges and dialogue between Chinese and American space agencies.
It is hoped that the US can change its course, abandon its hostile attitude towards China and abandon its strategy to contain China. Only in this way can a new starting point for China-US space cooperation be established, they said.
If the two countries can truly work together, it will benefit the world and support the building of a community with a shared future for humanity. The key is for the US to give up its ambition to dominate the world and abandon the series of unfriendly measures it has taken against China to achieve this ambition, they noted.
An experiment satellite of the Chasing All Transients Constellation Hunters mission was also launched on Saturday, according to Zhang Shuangnan, a senior researcher at the Institute of High Energy Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, who is also one of the initiators of the SVOM project and the deputy chief scientist of the project who led the development of one of the two Chinese instruments involved.
The satellite is a constellation consisting of hundreds of cubesats, each equipped with lightweight LIGA-Micro-Slot-Optics, designed for highly sensitive soft X-ray focusing. The constellation includes three types of cubesats – imaging, spectral timing and polarization – each with different focal plane detectors. This mission will significantly improve research into transients such as black holes, neutron stars and high-energy neutrinos.
Zhang told the Global Times on Sunday that the experiment satellite also falls within the cooperation framework between China and France and also within the discussion on future cooperation between the two countries. “If this is implemented, the sky will be filled with SVOM-style satellites.”