Working staff at the observation site at Sun Yat-sen University Photo: CCTV News
The Tianqin laser ranging station of Sun Yat-sen University detected the echo signal from the next generation lunar retroreflector NGLR-1 and confirmed the success of the ranging experiment on Wednesday, marking the first time Chinese scientists have detected this retroreflector, People’s Daily reported on Friday.
On Wednesday at 12:37 am, Han Xida and Wu Xianlin from the Sun Yat-sen University Tianqin laser ranging station, along with their team members, detected the laser echo signal from the NGLR-1. They initially recorded 17 distance measurements values, but the experiment was paused due to weather conditions. At 5:39 am, they successfully obtained 38 distance measurements from NGLR-1, confirming the success of the ranging experiment, according to the report.
In the last century, the US and the Soviet Union placed five laser reflector arrays on the moon for lunar measurements. In 2019, the Tianqin project team completed measurements to all the five retroreflectors. In March of this year, the US deployed the NGLR-1 to the moon, said the report.
“The successful detection of the echo signal from the retroreflector provides crucial data for understanding gravity, spacetime, the moon’s interior, and the evolution of the Earth-moon system, and helps us gain deeper insights into the fundamental laws of the universe,” said Wu, according to the report.
The Tianqin project is a space gravitational wave detection project proposed by Luo Jun, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2014. It is expected to deploy three satellites in an approximately 100,000-kilometer-high Earth orbit by around 2035, forming an equilateral triangle constellation with a side length of about 170,000 kilometers, establishing a space gravitational wave observatory for cutting-edge research in fundamental physics, astrophysics, and cosmology. This achievement is part of the progress of the Tianqin project, according to the report.
Global Times