* Astronomy

Chinese scientists on Monday completed the main part of the radio telescope which will serve China's moon-probe project scheduled for launch in 2007.

The antenna measures 40 metres in diameter, and weighs 400 tons. It's located in southwest China's Yunnan Province and is the country's second largest radio telescope. The largest is being built in Beijing.
According to Li Yan, director of Yunnan Observatory of Chinese Academy of Sciences, together with two radio telescopes already set up in Shanghai and northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, China now has four large radio telescopes which are 2,000 to 3,000 kilometres apart from each other.
The telescopes will form a comprehensive earth-based research and survey network that will be able to detect, track and retrieve data sent back from China's first moon-orbiting satellite.

Located on top of the 2000-meter-tall Mount Fenghuangshan (Phoenix) in an eastern suburb of Kunming, capital city of Yunnan Province, the newest radio telescope is "superbly well positioned".

The construction of the telescope started in August last year and will be completely installed and tested by June.
The Yunnan Astronomical Observatory was established in 1972. Its predecessor was the Mount Zijin Observatory's Working Station at Kunming.

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