In a bid to hunt life beyond Earth, China launches world's largest telescope
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The telescope is as big as the size of 30 football fields and was constructed in the year 2016.
China has launched the world's largest telescope which will be used for space research and will also help Beijing hunt extraterrestrial life, news agency Reuters reported quoting state news agency Xinhua.
The operations of the telescope, which is also known as "Sky Eye", were launched on Saturday. As per reports, the telescope is as big as the size of 30 football fields and was constructed in the year 2016.
The Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) has been hewed out of a mountain in the southwestern province of Guizhou in China.
The telescope is one of Beijing's attempts to advance its space programme and catch up with space research pioneers like the United States and Russia. It also plans to launch the construction of its manned space station by next year.
The telescope's trial operations had so far been reliable and stable, FAST's Chief Engineer Jiang Peng told Xinhua, adding that its sensitivity was more than 2.5 times that of the world's second-largest telescope.
The project is expected to lead to breakthroughs in areas such as low-frequency gravitational wave detection and interstellar molecules in years to come and has already obtained some valuable scientific data.
(With inputs from Reuters)