China successfully launches the Space Variable Objects Monitor, a space exploration satellite jointly developed by China and France, into its preset orbit at the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in southwest China’s Sichuan Province on June 22, 2024. Photo: CCTV News
China on Saturday successfully launched the Space Variable Objects Monitor (SVOM), a space exploration satellite jointly developed by China and France, into its predetermined orbit, marking a groundbreaking example of space cooperation between a major Western country and an Asian power, mission insiders and space observers said on Sunday.
As the Global Times learned from the China National Space Administration (CNSA), China launched the SVOM at 3 p.m. on Saturday using the Long March 2C carrier rocket from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in southwest China’s Sichuan Province.
This satellite is currently the world’s most powerful satellite for comprehensive multi-band observation of gamma-ray bursts and will play a significant role in scientific discoveries in the field of space astronomy, including gamma-ray burst (GRB) research, the CNSA said in a statement to the Global Times.
The SVOM project is a collaboration established in 2014 and is the second satellite-related cooperation between China and France after the Sino-French oceanography satellite, which was launched into orbit and began operations in 2018.
The SVOM is designed to hunt for short-lived and extremely violent cosmic explosions, so-called gamma-ray bursts, by detecting high-energy electromagnetic radiation in the X-ray and gamma-ray range.
To achieve this goal, Chinese scientists and engineers have developed two instruments for the satellite: the Gamma-ray Monitor to measure the emission spectrum of GRBs and the Visible Telescope, which searches for light in the optical wavelength range immediately after a gamma-ray burst.
In the meantime, the French side provided the ECLAIR telescope and the Microchannel X-ray telescope on board the SVOM.
The satellite platform on which the parts will be assembled was also developed by the Chinese side. The platform will provide the satellite with high stability and autonomous control as it hunts for weak signals in the universe.
The satellite will also be supported by China’s BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS) and can use the BDS’s short message services and the French VHF network, so the SVOM could send an alert signal to the ground station within five minutes of detecting a GRB event to notify large ground-based telescopes around the world and other GRB satellites such as SWIFT so that they can jointly observe the event, Global Times learned from the project’s developers.
SVOM’s Chinese team told Global Times that they look forward to greater cooperation with their French counterparts in the future.
France has extensive experience in space astronomy, oceanography and atmospheric monitoring. “We hope to deepen our collaboration with them in these areas and also in the study of planets outside the solar system,” said a team member.
This year marks the 60th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and France. Over the past 60 years, China and France have engaged in practical cooperation in the field of space, according to the CNSA.
The successful implementation of the Sino-French SVOM project is an excellent example of the close cooperation in the aerospace field between the two countries, the CNSA said, also listing other milestones of cooperation in recent years, such as the CFOSat launched in 2018 and the French radon detector on board the Chinese Chang’e-6 spacecraft, which landed on the far side of the moon in 2024.
Western media were quick to point out that the SVOM project is the result of a partnership between the French and Chinese space agencies, as well as other scientific and technical groups from both countries. However, space cooperation at this level between the West and China is considered “quite unusual, especially since the United States banned any cooperation between NASA and Beijing in 2011,” AFP reported.
“US concerns about technology transfer have been a major deterrent for US allies from working with the Chinese, but occasionally it still happens,” Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in the US, told AFP.
So while SVOM is “by no means unique,” it remains “significant” in the context of space cooperation between China and the West, McDowell added.
Chinese space observers said the SVOM is the latest notable example of high-level space cooperation between a Western power and China, and demonstrates China’s openness in the space field. This is in stark contrast to domestic U.S. laws such as the Wolf Amendment, which prevent normal exchanges and dialogue between Chinese and American space agencies.
It is hoped that the US will change course, abandon its hostile attitude towards China and abandon its strategy of containing China. Only in this way can a new starting point for cooperation between China and the US in the space field be created, it said.
If the two countries could truly work together, it would be beneficial to the world and help build a community with a shared future for mankind. The key is for the United States to give up its claim to world dominance and stop the series of unfriendly measures it has taken against China to achieve this goal.
An experimental satellite of the Chasing All Transients Constellation Hunters mission was also launched on Saturday, said Zhang Shuangnan, a senior researcher at the Institute of High Energy Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, who is also one of the initiators of the SVOM project and deputy chief scientist of the project, and who led the development of one of the two Chinese instruments involved.
The satellite is a constellation of hundreds of cubesats, all equipped with lightweight LIGA micro-slit optics designed for highly sensitive focusing of soft X-rays. The constellation includes three types of cubesats – imaging, spectral timing and polarization – each carrying different focal plane detectors. This mission will greatly enhance the study of transients such as black holes, neutron stars and high-energy neutrinos.
Zhang told the Global Times on Sunday that the experimental satellite is also part of the Sino-French cooperation and is also the subject of discussion on future cooperation between the two countries. “If it is implemented, the sky will be filled with SVOM-like satellites.”