Skip to content

Yangwang Constellation: the World's First Commercial Spaceborne Astronomical Telescope Network

Title: Yangwang Constellation: the World's First Commercial Spaceborne Astronomical Telescope Network

Speaker: Dr. Meng Su

Time: 16:00pm, October 15, 2021

Location: 3-302, PMO Xianlin Campus

Abstract: Since humans have been able to launch spacecraft into space for more than half a century, a small number of spacecraft have been used to carry out payloads for space science observation and research, and some spacecraft have been given the mission of astronomical observations. These telescopes in space have opened up a rich and exciting world of space astronomy through observation of different bands of the electromagnetic spectrum. The world's major spacefaring countries are competing to carry out the construction and operation of space astronomical equipments for decades. However, although large astronomical equipment is powerful, funding required for these large missions cannot meet the needs of the rapid development of astronomy. At the same time, global commercial aerospace industry is booming. Today, more than 80% of global space activities are no longer dominated by governments, but are rapidly carried out by commercial space companies represented by SpaceX in a low-cost and large-scale way. It is expected that the number of space satellites will increase by 1-2 orders of magnitude within ten years. China's commercial space has been carried out for more than five years, Origin Space is the only Chinese enterprise to carry out space astronomy activities, has successfully completed the lobster-eye X-ray detection satellite, Bayi-03, NEO-01, Yangwang-01 as the first commercial space telescope, with plans to launch multi-band Yangwang constellation astronomy telescope. The next five years will be a new era of large-scale space astronomy research.