In an impressive display of collaboration between the Western superpower and the Asian behemoth, a French-Chinese satellite launched on a quest for the universe’s most powerful explosions on Saturday.
The Space Variable Objects Monitor (SVOM), created by engineers in both nations, will look for gamma-ray bursts, the radiation from which has traveled billions of light years to reach Earth.
AFP journalists saw the launch of the 930-kg satellite, which was carrying four instruments—two French and two Chinese—aboard a Chinese Long March 2-C rocket from a space base in Xichang, in the southwest province of Sichuan, at approximately 3:00 pm (0700 GMT).
Gamma-ray bursts typically follow the fusion of compact stars or the explosion of massive stars, which are stars larger than the sun by a factor of 20.
The energy surge from the incredibly light cosmic beams is greater than that of nearly a billion billion suns.
Astrophysicist Ore Gottlieb of the Flatiron Institute’s Center for Astrophysics in New York told AFP that seeing them is like “looking back in time, as the light from these objects takes a long time to reach us”.
