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CHINA IS ON THE HUNT FOR EARTH 2.0 WITH PROPOSED SPACE TELESCOPE
If approved, the mission will launch in 2026
Reported by Andrew Jones
© Getty; NASA; PHL;
China could soon begin its first space-based hunt for exoplanets if a proposal from the Shanghai Astronomical Observatory (SAO) gets the go-ahead this summer. The new telescope would spend four years orbiting Sun-Earth Lagrange point 2, about 1.5 million kilometres (930,000 miles) from Earth. Once there, it would fix its seven telescopes on a portion of the sky towards the galactic centre and watch for signs of dimming as planets pass in front of their star as they orbit. The main targets are roughly Earth-size exoplanets with similar orbits around Sun-like stars. This requires high sensitivity to spot the signals of small-planet transits, as well as long-term monitoring to glimpse planets that take an Earthly year to go around their star.