On May 10, reporters learned from the National Space Science Center of the Chinese Academy of Sciences that as one of the major facilities of the national major science and technology infrastructure "Ground-based Comprehensive Monitoring Network for Space Environment" (Meridian Project Phase II), China's first radio telescope dedicated to interplanetary scintillation observation—the Interplanetary Scintillation Monitoring Telescope (also known as the IPS Telescope)—successfully passed its process test that day, marking that the Meridian Project Phase II, a major science project, as a whole has met the conditions for process acceptance.

　　The Interplanetary Scintillation Monitoring Telescope was jointly built under the leadership of the National Space Science Center of the Chinese Academy of Sciences together with the China Electronics Technology Group Corporation and other participants. It adopts a coordinated joint observation mode of one main station and two auxiliary stations, namely the Mingantu main station deployed in Xilin Gol League, Inner Mongolia, the Yihe Gaole auxiliary station, and the Wurigen Tara auxiliary station. The lines connecting the three stations pairwise approximately form an equilateral triangle, with a station spacing of about 200 kilometers. Among them, the Mingantu main station possesses currently China's largest parabolic cylindrical radio telescope, composed of three rows of parabolic cylindrical antennas each 140 meters long from north to south and 40 meters wide from east to west.

The main station of the Interplanetary Scintillation Monitoring Telescope (also known as the IPS Telescope) of Meridian Project Phase II. Photo provided by the National Space Science Center of the Chinese Academy of Sciences

　　According to the Meridian Project Phase II team of the National Space Science Center, scientific research and operational forecasting of space weather must analyze the complete causal temporal chain of the solar-terrestrial system—"solar atmospheric eruption—interplanetary space propagation—geospace response"—from the perspective of coupling. Interplanetary space plays the key role of a link connecting the Sun and the Earth, and is the nonlinear transmission channel of the solar-terrestrial system. By detecting the radio radiation of compact astronomical sources, the Interplanetary Scintillation Monitoring Telescope senses the flux scintillation signals caused by solar wind turbulence and remotely measures the radial velocity and density variations of the interplanetary solar wind. It is therefore an efficient ground-based facility for routine monitoring of interplanetary space weather.

　　The Interplanetary Scintillation Monitoring Telescope of Meridian Project Phase II was independently developed by China, achieving high-sensitivity capture of extremely weak transient cosmic radio signals at frequencies of 327, 654, and 1400 MHz. The antenna aperture, noise temperature, and detection sensitivity of its main station are at the international leading level. At the same time, the telescope system is based on a hybrid design of east-west mechanical scanning and north-south electronic scanning, and adopts phased-array feed digital multi-beam receiving technology to achieve continuous coverage of a wide field of view and a large sky area.

　　This process test shows that the Interplanetary Scintillation Monitoring Telescope has the capability for continuous detection of interplanetary scintillation signals, and all technical indicators of the one main station and two auxiliary stations have reached or exceeded the preliminary design requirements.

　　At present, the construction team of the Interplanetary Scintillation Monitoring Telescope project has made breakthroughs in core key technologies such as high-precision synchronous control of giant movable parabolic cylindrical antennas, measurement and correction of the tight coupling effect of ultra-long feeders, highly stable amplitude and phase reception under a digital-analog hybrid beamforming architecture, and interplanetary magnetohydrodynamic numerical tomography modeling driven by observation data. Among them, as China's first independently developed large-scale astronomical phased-array receiving system, it has achieved full localization from chip level to system level in key components and links that affect the telescope's core indicators, including system noise and sensitivity.

　　The National Space Science Center of the Chinese Academy of Sciences stated that in the next stage, the Interplanetary Scintillation Monitoring Telescope will be committed to filling the blind spots in China's routine interplanetary monitoring, remotely measuring the interplanetary solar wind speed day by day, and beginning to capture the dynamic propagation process of solar storms in interplanetary space, so as to provide China's interplanetary space weather forecasting with independent original observation data and quantitative numerical forecast products as early as possible.

The auxiliary station of the Interplanetary Scintillation Monitoring Telescope (also known as the IPS Telescope) of Meridian Project Phase II. Photo provided by the National Space Science Center of the Chinese Academy of Sciences

　　It is understood that the Meridian Project Phase II is led by the National Space Science Center of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and jointly built with 16 institutions across the country. After completion and operation, it will greatly enhance China's cognitive capacity regarding the space environment, its capacity for independent innovation, and its support and service capabilities. It will play an important role in accelerating the effort to seize the high ground of space science and technology and in building a space power, and will drive scientific and technological innovation to inject strong momentum into the development of new quality productive forces.

　　The world's first interplanetary scintillation monitoring telescope was born at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom. British scientists used it to discover pulsars and won the 1974 Nobel Prize in Physics, making it an astronomical facility of milestone significance in the history of world science and technology.