China's Dark Matter Particle Explorer, nicknamed "Wukong" or "Monkey King," will extend its service in space by two years, as it is still in good condition and collecting key scientific data.

 

中国的暗物质粒子探测卫星“悟空” 在太空中的服役期限将延长两年，目前它的状态良好仍在收集科研数据。
 

 

The research team operating the satellite said Monday that Wukong's key performance indicators¹ have barely changed compared with three years ago when it was launched as China's first dark matter probe satellite.

 

As of Monday, the satellite has reached its expected service life of three years, having orbited the earth 16,597 times in a sun-synchronous orbit at an altitude of 500 kilometers, detecting around 5.5 billion cosmic particles.

 

"We hope that Wukong's 'sharp eyes' will detect 300 electrons that are obviously different from the normal energy spectrum² by the end of 2019, which will provide theorists with sufficient data to study the nature of the electrons," said Chang Jin, chief scientist of the team.

 

Chang said the research team is quite confident about the satellite working another two years in space.

 

China launched Wukong at the end of 2015 to detect the high-energy electrons and gamma rays in space, which might be generated in the process of annihilation or decay of dark matter.

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