China Gonna to Own World's Largest Telescope

One of the world's biggest telescopes is going to be in China as the country has started assembling of the parts of the telescope. The telescope is going to be the size of nearly 30 football pitches.

The 500-meter Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope (FAST) is located in a bowl-shaped valley between hills in the southwestern province of Guizhou. Technicians presently working on the telescope are attaching 4,450 triangular-shaped panels to the telescope's reflector on Thursday, the Xinhua news agency reported.

Makers of the telescope claim that FAST will be the world's largest single-aperture telescope, and will overtake the Arecibo Observatory in the US territory of Puerto Rico, which is 305 meters (1000 feet) in diameter.

Xinhua stated that since past several years Chinese scientists have relied upon 'second hand' data collected by others, but the new telescope is expected to enhance China's capacity to observe outer space.

Wu Xiangping, director-general of the Chinese Astronomical Society, said, "Having a more sensitive telescope, we can receive weaker and more distant radio messages. It will help us to search for intelligent life outside of the galaxy and explore the origins of the universe".

Beijing is accelerating its military-run multi-billion-dollar space exploration programme, and also plans to set a permanent orbiting station by 2020 and send astronauts to moon.

The telescope's dish will have a perimeter of about 1.6 kilometers, and there are no towns within five kilometers, giving it ideal surroundings to listen for signals from space, Xinhua said. Construction on the telescope started in March 2011 and is scheduled to finish next year, it added.

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