China launches satellite to reveal dark matter secrets

The Dark Matter Particle Explorer (DAMPE) rode into space on a Long March 2D rocket from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the Gobi desert, about 1600 kilometers west of Beijing, at about 8:12 a.m. local time. Dark matter is an invisible material believed to have made up over 95 percent of the universe’s mass.

The satellite will be placed in the sun-synchronous orbit, 500 Km. above the Earth to observe the direction, energy and the electric-charged high energy particles in space.

China’s space device is equipped with the widest observation spectrum and highest energy resolution of any dark-matter probe in the world, according to Chang Jin.

The new dark matter explorer satellite, nicknamed “Wukong”, the monkey king from the Chinese classical fiction “Journey to the West”, was launched on Thursday morning from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre in Gansu Province, Xinhua. Video: China is set to launch its first dark matter exploration satellite on Thursday.

Wu Kong is created to search for dark matter, a key subject in the study of the cosmos. “If dark matter annihilates, as some theories predict, DAMPE has an opportunity to detect dark matter annihilation products”, David Spergel, a theoretical astrophysicist from Princeton University, said, according to Science magazine.

Theorised by scientists who could not understand missing mass and strangely bent light in faraway galaxies, dark matter has become widely accepted in the physics community even though its existence has never been concretely proven. The rest is accounted for by dark energy, am unknown form of energy permeating the entire universe.

Cosmic rays that could be emitted from annihilation events streak across the universe at almost the speed of light, and instruments like the sensors on DAMPE could find subtle signals hidden within the high-energy particles traceable back to a dark matter origin.

Any new development in the understanding of the dark matter could lead to a scientific milestone and can provide scientists with better and clearer idea about the past and the future of galaxies and universe.