Nation embraces greater appliance of science

SURFACE

Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope

Launch: Received first data in 2016. Became fully operational in January

Status: Operational. Upgrades completed last month

Location: Pingtang, Guizhou province

Mission: As the world's largest single-dish radio telescope, it is used to detect radio signals from celestial bodies and search for signs of extraterrestrial life

Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak

Launch: 2006

Status: Operational. Latest version set to launch this year

Location: Hefei, Anhui province

Mission: Nicknamed the "artificial sun", the facility aims to mimic the nuclear fusion used to power the sun and create limitless energy on Earth. In 2018, it achieved a temperature of over 100 million C, more than six times hotter than the core of the sun, and sustained this extreme condition for 10 seconds