CHINA will launch a series of scientific satellite missions during its 15th Five-Year Plan period (2026–2030), focusing on major frontiers such as the origins of the universe, space weather, and life, the National Space Science Center of the Chinese Academy of Sciences said. Officials told a press briefing Monday that key missions would include the Hongmeng Program, Kuafu-2 satellite, an exoplanet survey project searching for Earth-like worlds, and an upgraded X-ray timing and polarization observatory. These missions aim to advance research into the universe’s “cosmic dark age,” the sun’s magnetic cycle and the search for Earth analogs, CCTV News reported. The Hongmeng Program, designed to detect the universe’s “infant cries,” consists of 10 satellites forming a low-frequency radio telescope array. The satellites will travel to the far side of the moon, a naturally quiet “radio sanctuary” shielded from Earth and solar interference, allowing the system to capture extremely faint signals from deep space. The project aims to shed light on the turbulent epoch hundreds of millions of years after the Big Bang, before the first stars formed. Kuafu-2, which “stares directly at the sun,” will become the world’s first spacecraft to orbit the sun’s polar regions, areas that contain crucial clues to the workings of solar magnetic activity. The third satellite is an exoplanet surveyor “searching for a new home for humanity.” It will sweep the galaxy in search of “Earth 2.0” — planets similar in size to Earth and situated within the habitable zone. The fourth satellite is a “space observatory” positioned beyond Earth’s atmosphere, designed to probe the universe’s “extreme forbidden zones” — including the event horizons of black holes and the searing surfaces of neutron stars, where gravity warps spacetime and magnetic fields can be a trillion times stronger than Earth’s. (SD-Agencies) | 