Sino-French satellite launched

Collaboration to seek out secrets of most extreme explosive events in cosmos

A cutting-edge astronomical spacecraft jointly developed by China and France was launched into its preset orbit on Saturday afternoon to capture and observe gamma-ray bursts — the most distant explosions of stars — the China National Space Administration said.

The Space Variable Objects Monitor spacecraft is a combination of small telescopes. It was placed in a low-Earth orbit by a Chinese Long March 2C carrier rocket launched at 3 pm from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in Sichuan province, the administration said in a news release.

The 930-kilogram spacecraft was built by the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Innovation Academy for Microsatellites in Shanghai. It carries four scientific payloads: the ECLAIRs coded mask camera and the Microchannel X-ray Telescope made by French scientists, and the Gamma-ray Burst Monitor and the Visible Telescope built by the Chinese team.