In this photo, from November 2023, a team of engineers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) is completing the construction of the Einstein Probe spacecraft at the satellite launch centre in Xichang, south-west China.
Einstein Probe is a collaboration led by CAS with the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE), Germany. The mission is designed to continuously monitor the X-ray sky and hunt for powerful blasts of X-ray light coming from mysterious celestial objects such as neutron stars and black holes.
To achieve this, the spacecraft is equipped with a new generation of instruments with high sensitivity and the ability to observe large areas of the sky: the Wide-field X-ray Telescope (WXT) and the Follow-up X-ray Telescope (FXT). In this photo, part of the WXT structure wrapped in a gold ‘foil’ is visible on top of the boxy white structure that the engineers are assembling (the service module).
After this stage, the solar panels were mounted onto two opposite sides of the service module structure.
The completed Einstein Probe spacecraft is about 3 m wide and 3.4 m tall, and weighs approximately 1450 kg.