BEIJING, Nov. 26 (Xinhua) -- A detector, jointly developed by Dutch and Chinese scientists and carried by the relay satellite of China's Chang'e-4 mission, has started scientific detection.
The antennas of the low-frequency radio spectrometer on the relay satellite Queqiao, meaning Magpie Bridge, have been unfolded, and the detector is expected to help astronomers listen to the deeper reaches of the cosmos, according to the China National Space Administration.
China launched the relay satellite on May 21, 2018, to set up a communication link between the earth and the moon's far side.
The satellite was sent into a halo orbit around the second Lagrangian point of the earth-moon system, nearly 500,000 km from Earth. It is the world's first communication satellite operating in that orbit.
With the help of the relay satellite, China's Chang'e-4 probe made the first-ever soft landing on the Von Karman Crater in the South Pole-Aitken Basin on the far side of the moon on Jan. 3, 2019.
The detector on the relay satellite is able to observe the radio bursts of Earth, Jupiter and other planets, conduct collaborative observation with the low-frequency radio spectrometer on the lander of the Chang'e-4 probe and similar instruments on Earth, and help explore the exoplanets, said scientists.
