China to Launch Retrievable Satellite to Probe Dark Matter

China will launch a series of scientific satellites including a retrievable one to probe 'dark matter' later this year, officials said today. The development of four scientific satellites is going well, National Space Science Centre's director Wu Ji under the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) said at an event to mark the 10th anniversary of cooperation between China's Double Star space mission and the European Space Agency's (ESA) Cluster mission to investigate the earth's magnetosphere. The first of the series, the dark matter particle explorer, will be launched from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre in northwest China at the end of this year. More

(Source: NDTV - Nov 2)