China has launched a new satellite that will search for high-energy particles and γ-rays as part of an overall goal of learning more about dark matter, the invisible force believed to make up about 85 percent of the universe’s mass, various media outlets reported this week.
According to Nature and Phys.org, the Dark Matter Particle Explorer (DAMPE), also known as the “Wukong” or “Monkey King” in honor of a character from a 16th century Chinese novel, lifted off Thursday from a launch pad in the Gansu province of northwestern China and was carried into orbit by a Chinese Long March 2D rocket.
The DAMPE project is a collaboration among the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the University of Geneva, and several academic institutions in Italy. The probe will use four instruments (a BGO calorimeter, a neutron detector, a plastic scintillator detector, and a silicon-Tungsten Tracker) to capture high energy particles and track them back to their original sources.
It is believed that those sources will be dark matter collisions, and scientists believe that if they can find and study them, they will be able to gain new insights into dark matter itself. Wukong has a large surface area that can not only observe high volumes of cosmic rays, but will also be able to survey the sky at higher energies than existing detectors.
Several other Chinese space science missions to come
DAMPE is one of five space science missions scheduled to be launched under a new Chinese Academy of Sciences initiative known as the Strategic Priority Program on Space Science. The next step in the program, which officially began four years ago, will be the launch of two new satellites next year, according to Nature and Phys.org.
One of those satellites is being hailed as the first quantum-communications satellite, and will be used to see if photons sent from Earth to the satellite can be used as part of a quantum network. Another of the projects will involve placing an X-ray telescope with unique energy band sensing capabilities into orbit, where it will be used to monitor radiation emitted by black holes.
As for Wukong itself, theoretical astrophysicist David Spergel of Princeton University called it “an exciting mission,” telling Science that it could detect dark matter annihilation products, and Philipp Azzarello, a University of Geneva in Switzerland astrophysicist who helped design the satellite’s detector, said that he was “confident” that it would “contribute to the dark matter search.”
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Image credit: Department of Nuclear and Particle Physics, University of Geneva
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