About Space Variable Objects Monitor (SVOM):
- It is a French-Chinese satellite which aims to detect and study gamma-ray bursts.
- It was launched by a Long March-2C rocket from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in southwest China's Sichuan Province.
- It is a 930-kilogram satellite carrying four instruments - two French and two Chinese.
- The satellite has been sent into an orbit over 600 kilometers above Earth and has a designed life of five years, though scientists expect it could be operational for as long as 20 years.
- Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs):
- GRBs generally occur after the explosion of huge stars - those more than 20 times as big as the sun - or the fusion of compact stars.
- The extremely bright cosmic beams can give off a blast of energy equivalent to over a billion billion suns.
- Observing them is like "looking back in time, as the light from these objects takes a long time to reach earth.
- The rays carry traces of the gas clouds and galaxies they pass through on their journey through space - valuable data for better understanding the history and evolution of the universe.
- GRBs are notoriously hard to catch as they can appear anywhere in the sky and last for just a few seconds. They are readily absorbed by the Earth’s atmosphere, so the only way to record them is to place probes in space.
- SVOM has the potential to unravel several mysteries in the field of GRBs, including detecting the most distant GRBs in the universe, which correspond to the earliest GRBs.
- The data gathered will help test the laws of physics under conditions that cannot be replicated on Earth and provide insights into the dynamics of the universe.
