A fund of 160 million yuan (23.3 million U.S. dollars) was set up Tuesday to help the development of four space science satellites, as well as advanced scientific research.
Jointly set up by the National Natural Science Foundation of China and Chinese Academy of Sciences, with each side sponsoring half of the investment, the fund will last from 2017 to 2020.
The four satellites are the Dark Matter Particle Explorer Satellite, retrievable scientific research satellite SJ-10, a quantum communication satellite and a hard X-ray modulation telescope satellite.
The fund will support experiments such as exploration of dark matter particles, microgravity science and space life science, satellite-ground quantum communication experiments, and observation of compact objects including black holes and neutron stars.