During a broadcast event on December 17, the following achievements were celebrated:
On January 3, 2019, Chang’e-4 spacecraft landed at 177.6 degrees east longitude and 45.5 degrees south latitude on the back of the moon; pictures are transmitted by relay satellite Qiao located in an appropriate stationary lunar position,
on April 10, astronomers from all over the world including China associated in The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) network — a planet-scale array of eight ground-based radio telescopes forged through international collaboration– took the first picture ever of a black hole. This black hole is located in the center of the great elliptical galaxy M87 in the direction of Virgo, 55 million light years away from the earth, and its mass is about 6.5 billion times that of the Sun,
- on June 5, China made its first maritime launch; seven satellites were launched simultaneously from a platform in the Yellow Sea using a “Long-March-11” carrier rocket,
- on June 6, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) issued the first 5G commercial licenses to China Telecom, China Mobile, China Unicom, and China Electric Power. Features of 5G are high speed, low delay and high reliability, an important basis for the development of next-generation information technology and the digital economy,
- on June 17, Nobel laureate TU Youyou’s team reported on the mechanism of drug resistance to artemisinin and on new indications of this drug such as the treatment of lupus erythematosus. The revival of traditional Chinese medicine overseas has been highly appreciated by the World Health Organization (WHO),
- on August 1, Nature magazine reported on the world’s first hybrid architecture brain-type chip developed at Tsinghua University, Jing Pei et al., Nature 572, 106-111 (2019). The chip’s fusion technology combines brain-type computation and computer-based machine learning and will accelerate R&D of artificial intelligence,
- on August 13, the largest yet built mud-balanced shield machine started operation at the Spring Wind Tunnel in Shenzhen. The drilling diameter is 15.8 meters, the weight 4800 tons, and the total length 135 m. Energy output is over 11,500 kW, and total thrust is 24,600 tons,
- on September 17, president Xi Jinping awarded the Medal of the Republic of China and a national honor title to 42 people, including YUAN Longping, “the father of hybrid rice”,
- on October 16, the Hubble telescope, managed by the NASA and the European Space Agency, took a picture of the first interstellar comet “2I/Borisov”, named in honor of its discoverer, Crimean astronomer Genaday Borisov
on November 14, China’s Mars exploration mission was unveiled by a test on air levitation, obstacle avoidance, deceleration and landing in a Martian environment
CCTV December 17, 2019