written by andrew jones, on april 26th, 2023
who: china
when: prototype to launch around 2027
why: to search for habitable planets orbiting other stars.
what: the miyin project envisions sending four light-collecting telescopes and a beam combiner to sun-earth lagrange point 2.
how: flying in formation, the spacecraft will use interferometric techniques to provide high angular resolution mid-infrared observations to directly image and characterize exoplanets around stars up to 65 light-years away.
interesting paragraph: (para 5) “a prototype of the array would then launch around 2027, before building the five-spacecraft system at L2 in 2030. a further four spacecraft could be added to the array in a second mission phase beyond 2030.”
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