The final piece of the Five hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) was successfully installed by the Chinese Academy of Sciences and is now officially complete. The last panel was just a small part of the total size which is approximately the size of 30 football fields– the largest in the world.
The said telescope is located in a small mountain in Guizhou.
Zheng Xiaonian, deputy head of the National Astronomical Observation under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said that the scientists will start debugging and executing trials for the telescope. He said that the project aims to better understand the origin of the universe and potentially boost the hunt for extraterrestrial life. He adds that the $180 million radio telescope would be the leading technology in telescopes for one to two decades.
The telescope took five years to complete and is expected to commence operations in September. Chinese President Xi Jinping has made China’s space program a priority, calling for the country to establish itself as a space power. China is currently working on a space station and is planning to put a man on the moon by 2036.
