China's answer to the
Hubble Space Telescope will join the country's space station in orbit.
China wants to launch its first
large space telescope in late 2023 to survey the skies, deliver new insights about distant galaxies, and unlock the mysteries of dark matter and dark energy.
The Chinese Space Station Telescope
is an optical and ultraviolet space observatory that will boast a 6.6-foot-diameter lens, making it comparable to the venerable Hubble Space Telescope.
Though the resolution of
China's telescope will be similar to Hubble's, the CSST's field of view will be 350 times larger
The CSST will be able to
observe much greater expanses of the sky at a time than the 32-year-old Hubble, and will survey 40% of the sky with its 2.5 billion-pixel camera
NASA, meanwhile, has launched
its own successor to Hubble, the James Webb Space Telescope, which, for comparison, has a primary mirror with a diameter of 21.3 feet (6.5 m).