China’s first space-based scientific satellite for  dark matter search – “WuKong” or “Monkey King” was launched successfully  from Jiuquan satellite launch center at 08:12 (China Standard Time) on  Tuesday, December 17^th. This satellite is the first of a  series of space science missions of Strategic Priority Program on space  science from the Chinese Academy of Science (CAS). With its successful  launch, Wukong, together with the following missions, will upgrade the  space study of China to a new height.

Wukong, also named the Dark Matter Particle explorer  (DAMPE), is a 1.7 ton special purposed science satellite. Its payload  consists of four sub-detector developed by four branch institutes of  CAS. The Purple Mountain Observatory (PMO) of Nanjing, as the general  payload unit, plays a leading role in the construction. Professor Jin  Chang from PMO acts as the principal investigator (PI) for this project.  Chang has also organized an international collaboration which includes  teams from Swiss and Italian for the future science study.

   This satellite will search for dark matter and  apply cosmic ray study during the 3 year operation on orbit. Comparing  with the similar telescopes for cosmic ray study, it has the advantages  of covering energy range from 5 GeV to 10 TeV, good energy resolution  and large acceptance area. These Properties are designed to match the  demand of a precise measurement of cosmic rays. We expect Wukong to  bring breakthroughs in related physics and astronomy areas, especially  in dark matter search, the origin of cosmic rays and high energy gamma  observation.