China holds the world’s last single-parabola giant telescope – 500 meters FAST

• China’s Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope (FAST) is the largest and last giant single-plate telescope left after the collapse of Arecibo.
• As the lunar mission to China advances, experts say, through its resolution and sensitivity, the FAST telescope will help produce critical research in the coming decades.
• Opened in 2016, in November, Chinese state media reported that FAST could welcome foreign scientists in 2021.
• Visit the Business Insider home page for more stories.

After the tragedy that hit the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico on Wednesday, the scientific community mourned the loss of an astronomical landmark.

Now there is only one last giant, single-plate radio telescope left in the world: the 500-meter Chinese Aperture (FAST) spherical radio telescope.

Completed in 2016 and located in Guizhou province in southwest China, the observatory cost $ 171 million and took about half a decade to build. Its vastness allows it to detect faint radio waves from pulsars and materials in distant galaxies; 300 of its 500 meters in diameter can be used at any time.

Experts say that in the next decade FAST should shine in terms of studying the origins of supermassive black holes or identifying weak radio waves to understand the characteristics of planets outside the solar system.

In November, Chinese state media reported that the FAST facility would be open to foreign scientists in 2021.

The National Astronomical Observatory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, which oversees FAST, did not immediately respond to the comment.

NAIC Arecibo / NSF Observatory, Ricardo Arduengo / AFP / Getty Images

There were some functions the Arecibo telescope could do that FAST cannot, however.

“For observation within the solar system, Arecibo was able to transmit signals and receive their reflections from the planets, a function that FAST cannot complete on its own. The function has allowed Arecibo to facilitate the monitoring of near-Earth asteroids, which is important in defending Earth from space threats, “Liu Boyang, a researcher in radio astronomy at the University of Western Australia’s International Center for Radio Astronomy Research, told the South China Morning Post.

As Business Insider reported earlier in the week, China has made great strides in the space race as the United States has suffered a setback.

China’s Chang’e-5 probe landed on the moon this week, collected lunar samples, and the samples returned to its orbiter, which will start the process of a weeks-long trip back to Earth to deliver the samples. Today, Chinese state media and NASA shared images of China planting its flag on the moon.