Dennis NormileThe China National Space Administration’s Chang’e-5 mission, set to return Moon rocks to Earth next week, has grabbed headlines around the world.
But China’s other space agency, the science-focused National Space Science Center (NSSC) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), is making news of its own: Just after 4 a.m.
local time today it launched its Gravitational Wave High-energy Electromagnetic Counterpart All-sky Monitor (GECAM) from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in Sichuan province.GECAM’s two small satellites—130 centimeters tall and weighing 150 kilograms—are now in identical 600-kilometer-high orbits, but on opposite sides of Earth.