China Space News reported in its Jan. 11 edition that SZ-2 carried soft and hard x-ray and gamma-ray detectors on board to study the enigmatic gamma-ray bursters (GRBs).

Soft x-rays refer to the relatively long wavelengths and low energy radiation while hard x-rays are the very energetic and short wavelengths radiation. Gamma-rays have even shorter wavelengths and higher energies than x-rays.

The three detectors are spectrometers with high temporal resolutions and wide energy bandwidths.

Also on Jan. 11 the Hong Kong-based Wen Wei Po newspaper reported that the Purple Mountain Observatory (PMO) in the Nanjing district and the High Energy Physics Research Institute jointly designed and developed the instrumentation package in the past seven years. Both organizations are member institutions of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).

GRBs are mysterious flashes of high-energy radiation that appear from random directions in space. These extremely energetic events can last from a fraction of a second to a few hundred seconds. The energy released in such a titanic explosion is equal to all of the Sun's energy output over its 10 billion (10,000 million) year lifetime. U.S. Air Force Vela satellites first discovered GRBs in the 1960s.

Astronomers have proposed numerous theories of their origin since then, but the causes of GRBs remain unknown. NASA's Compton Gamma-Ray Observatory (CGRO) satellite, which reentered the Earth's atmosphere on June 4 last year, detected more than 2,500 bursts in its mission.

Since the Earth's atmosphere shields its inhabitants from the dangerous x-rays and gamma-rays, detection of high-energy radiation from GRBs is only possible from space.

This is China's first experiment to study GRBs. According to Principal Investigator and former Director of PMO Prof. Zhang Heqi, with remote control from Earth the three detectors will study the GRB intensity, direction and variation in the different energy bands. Data collected is then transmitted to astronomers for processing and analysis.

The same spectrometers will perform a second experiment to study high-energy radiation and particles that the Sun emits in eruptive events, such as a flare.

During a massive solar flare, the Sun releases copius amount of x-rays, gamma-rays and high-speed particles such as protons and electrons. The most energetic particles can arrive at the near-Earth environment within minutes after the associated outburst of radiation.

The high-energy solar radiation and particles pose great risk to orbiting yuhangyuans ("astronauts"), particularly during a spacewalk, and satellites.

"Although the design and development of Shenzhou-2 incorporates materials that shield radiation from entering the vehicle, if a yuhangyuan encounters gamma-rays while performing extravehicular activities, the consequence is unthinkable," said Prof. Zhang.

He explained that studying solar gamma radiation not only would shed light on the nuclear processes inside our star that gives rise to the emission, but could also lead to more precise forecast of when these energetic events might occur and advanced warnings to yuhangyuans.

Supplement to the solar observations is a separate set of detectors that monitor the changing particle composition, density and trajectory in space. These parameters represent conditions of the space environment.

The space environment forecast centre uses similar data from both domestic and foreign satellites and ground-based observations of the geomagentic field to perform an integrated analysis, which results in issuing short-, medium- and long-range space weather forecast.

Chinese space officials said that this kind of reporting would constitute the future space weather forecasting system for the manned spaceflight project.

China Space News wrote that a selection of unspecified experiments on SZ-2 would make further observations in the following six months. It is likely that these are the astrophysics experiments, which are probably installed in the Orbital Module and left in orbit for the coming months.

If the astrophysics experiments are indeed staying in orbit for an extended period, continuous observations of energetic cosmic phenomena will be a welcome news for astronomers worldwide. Particularly valuable would be the on-going monitoring of solar activities when the Sun is at its maximum activity during the current Solar Cycle 23.

Prof. Zhang told Wen Wei Po that the astrophysics experiments on SZ-2 opened a new era in Chinese space astronomy. Since the instrumentation could be very specific, he said that astronomers and technicians began exploring the future direction of research so they could prepare more instruments for other Shenzhou missions.

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