“The launch of SVOM closed a loop that started 18 years ago,” said François Gonzalez, manager of the French SVOM project at CNES.
Over the years, members of the science and engineering teams learned how to “adapt their ways” to work together and move the mission forward, he said.
While such flashes of light provide unique insights into major cosmic phenomena, they are extremely difficult to capture as they can appear anywhere in the sky and last only a few seconds.
SVOM will be able to observe at different wavelengths and obtain “the most complete set of data” showing how eruptions occur and evolve over time, Gonzalez said.
SVOM is equipped with four state-of-the-art instruments – two built in France and two in China. For example, the French-built ECLAIRs telescope will play a critical role, autonomously detecting bursts in near-real time in the gamma energy and x-ray energy range.
Bertrand Cordier, the French principal investigator of the mission from the Saclay Nuclear Research Center near Paris, noted that coordinated observations between SVOM and large ground-based telescopes were key to understanding the explosions.
“The main challenge of the mission is to determine the origin of the gamma-ray bursts,” Cordier said. “What environment do they come from? In what period are they created? Only detailed analyzes of their light by ground-based telescopes can answer these questions.
SVOM is expected to detect 70 to 80 gamma-ray bursts each year.
Space has been a top priority for scientific cooperation between the two countries. The partnership between the two national space agencies began in 1997, when Beijing and Paris signed an agreement on the peaceful use of outer space.
The China-France Oceanographic Satellite, launched in 2018, has allowed scientists from around the world to make more accurate ocean forecasts and provide early warnings of severe weather events.
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