1.China's first unmanned urban A-type train rolls off production line in Chengdu

China's first new-generation urban A-type train, which uses 5G vehicle-to-vehicle communication for fully automatic driving and has a speed of 160 km per hour, officially rolled off the assembly line in Chengdu, Southwest China's Sichuan province, on Jan 7.

It is the fastest urban A-type train in China, and is the first time in the world to feature fully automatic driving with 5G vehicle-to-vehicle communication and a speed of 160 km/h.

China's first unmanned urban A-type train. [Photo/WeChat account: szchtf]

2. Air mileage of Tianwen-1 exceeds 400 million km

By 6 am on Jan 3, Tianwen-1, China's unmanned Mars probe, had been in orbit for 163 days, with a total distance covered of more than 400 million km. It is now about 130 million km away from Earth and 8.3 million km from Mars.

The probe is scheduled to put on a near-Mars braking around a month later in order to enter the planet's orbit and prepare to land.

Tianwen-1 is to enter the Mars orbit in about a month. [Photo/WeChat account: szchtf]

3.China builds world's first space-to-ground quantum communication network

Pan Jianwei's team at the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) recently published a paper on quantum communication networks in the science magazine Nature.

The team built the world's first wide-area quantum communication network integrating more than 700 terrestrial fiber optic quantum key distribution (QKD) links and two high-speed QKD links in free space. Based on that, the quantum communication line between Beijing and Shanghai has been successfully connected with the Micius quantum communication satellite.

The network realizes large-scale and multi-user QKD over a ground span of 4,600 km.

4. China's "Eye of Heaven" to open globally this year

The world's largest single-dish radio telescope Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST), nicknamed "China's Eye of Heaven", is set to open to the global scientific community.

Starting from April 1, scientists from all over the world can submit applications online to the National Astronomical Observatories of China, and observation time will be distributed across various research projects from Aug 1. About 10 percent of the FAST's observation time will be allocated to foreign scientists during the first year that the telescope is available to the world.

China's Eye of Heaven. [Photo/WeChat account: szchtf]

5.LHAASO's first detector array completed

According to the Institute of High Energy Physics (IHEP) at the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), the water level at the No.3 pond of the Water Cherenkov Detector Array (WCDA) has reached the required standard. This completes the construction of the WCDA.

WCDA is the first Large High-Altitude Air Shower Observatory (LHAASO) detector array. It is composed of three ponds, and has 3,120 detector units and 6,240 photosensitive probes, covering a total detector area of 78,000 square meters.