In 2021, China will open its Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope to foreign researchers. The radio telescope in southwest China’s mountains is the world’s largest and, for the time being, the only one of its kind.
The decision comes after the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, the world’s second largest radio telescope, was destroyed when its receiver base broke loose and collided with the telescope’s 140-meter radio dish below.
Fast has been used to capture radio signals from the cosmos since it started full service in January of this year. The ultra-sensitive telescope is up to three times more powerful than Arecibo, and it is surrounded by a 5-kilometer radio silence zone where radio interference from phones and other devices is prohibited.
China has stated that it will consider requests from international researchers to use the telescope for experiments. “Our scientific committee wants to make FAST more accessible to the international community,” Wang Qiming, chief inspector of FAST’s service and development center, said. Following the collapse of Arecibo Observatory, it is expected that the telescope will be in high demand.
