Chinese scientists detect echo signal from next generation lunar retroreflector for 1st time

Chinese scientists detected the echo signal from the next-generation lunar retroreflector NGLR-1 for the first time and thus confirmed the success of the ranging experiment on Wednesday.

In the early hours of Wednesday, scientists at the Tianqin laser ranging station of Sun Yat-sen University in Zhuhai City, south China's Guangdong Province, detected the laser echo signal from the NGLR-1 and successfully obtained 38 distance measurements from the retroreflector several hours later, confirming the success of the ranging experiment.

Their success makes China the fourth country to achieve such a measurement, following France, Germany, and the United States.

In the last century, the U.S. and the Soviet Union placed five laser reflector arrays on the moon for lunar measurements. The NGLR-1 was deployed to the moon by the U.S. in March this year.

"Using ground-based observatories, we sent laser pulses to the retroreflector placed on the lunar surface. By accurately measuring the round-trip time of these laser pulses, we can determine the distance between the Earth and the Moon. The new retroreflector can provide more accurate distance measurement data. The data we collected will provide important new support for testing general relativity and gravitational theories, lunar physics, and the dynamical evolution of the Earth-Moon system," said Lin Xudong, a professor at the Tianqin laser ranging station.

This achievement is part of the progress of the Tianqin project, a space gravitational wave detection project proposed 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. This constellation will establish a space gravitational wave observatory for cutting-edge research in fundamental physics, astrophysics, and cosmology.

Chinese scientists detect echo signal from next generation lunar retroreflector for 1st time

Chinese scientists detect echo signal from next generation lunar retroreflector for 1st time

Chinese scientists detect echo signal from next generation lunar retroreflector for 1st time

Chinese scientists detect echo signal from next generation lunar retroreflector for 1st time

Chinese scientists detect echo signal from next generation lunar retroreflector for 1st time

China's expanding ties with the Global South have pushed trade growth far beyond the global average despite the tariff pressure from the U.S., according to experts.

"Whilst the Trump tariffs ultimately led to a significant drop-off in Chinese exports to the United States and vice versa, the trading relationships across much of the rest of the world continue to grow, and China's trading relationships across the Belt and Road Initiative countries, as well as with the Global South, more broadly speaking, has grown at rates far greater than global trade growth as a whole. And we see that evidenced by the latest data. When we break that down, we see that has been underpinned by the developments in high-technology products in particular, whether it's EVs, whether it's even in semiconductors, as well as photovoltaic panels, etc.," said Dr. Warwick Powell, an adjunct professor at the Queensland University of Technology, in a TV interview with China Global Television Network (CGTN) on Thursday.

"And you've got to look at the places where the growth is taking place. Africa, I think, is a very interesting case in point, because the kinds of things that China has been exporting and expanding in terms of its exports are all about African economic development -- its machinery, its energy systems, its technology, and this really goes to delivering on China's broader strategic ambition as an emerging great power to be an enabling great power, supporting the development of its partners around the world," he added.

Qian Jun, executive dean of International School of Finance at Fudan University, attributed the trade growth to Chinese firms' endeavor to tap into key regions like ASEAN, Latin America, the Middle East and Africa.

"The main increase of export comes from, as we have discussed, these new areas: The ASEAN economy -- southeast Asia remains the most important trading partner -- and also Latin America, the Middle East, and these [other such] new regions. So, the exporters of the Chinese companies are also very good at adjusting their destinies, their strategies, how to market their goods and services, so that the reliance on the U.S., for example, has gone down a lot," Qian said.

China's trade momentum increasingly powered by Global South: experts