Carrier Long March 2-D rocket blasts off, sending into space the country's first Dark Matter Particle Explorer Satellite. [Photo/Xinhua]

China launches its first dark matter satellite

China successfully launched its first dark matter satellite at a launch center in Northwest China's Gansu province on Dec 17. The satellite, nicknamed "Wukong", is named after the heroic Monkey King in Chinese class novel the Journey to the West.

Designed in a one-cubic-meter box weighing 1.9 metric tons and with four probes aboard, in the next three years, Wukong will search for dark matter, a theoretical form of matter which is believed to make up a very large part of the cosmos and holds the key to understanding the phenomena that could not be explained with current knowledge of physics.

Related: China successfully launches its first dark matter satellite

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