Satellite shows you: China's creations on the wasteland

Over the past decade, the Chinese have transformed the wasteland, connected the world, reduced carbon emissions and saved energy, improved people's livelihood, and continuously created new miracles. Xinhua News Agency has produced four issues of "Seeing China from Satellites" graphic stories, allowing you to overlook this changing Eastern country from high above. Today is the first issue - "China's Creation on the Wasteland".

China's Mars simulation base

⊹ Location: Hongya District, Dachaidan, Haixi Mongolian and Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Qinghai

This is "the place in China that most resembles Mars", and scientists have built China's first Mars simulation base here.

Standing on the red cliff and looking around, the colorful mounds and Danxia landforms of various shapes in front of you look like lonely castles. This is a mixture of Yadan landform and Danxia landform.

Mars is a desert with no vegetation. Geologically, there are sediments from dried-up rivers and lakes. In terms of material composition, there are a lot of sulfates, perchlorates and other remnants of dried-up water. The base has similar characteristics to Mars in the above three aspects, which is why it has become a Mars simulation base. (Xinhua News Agency reporter Lv Xueli)

Lop Nur Potassium Sulfate Production Base

⊹ Location: Lop Nur Town, Ruoqiang County, Bayingolin Mongol Autonomous Prefecture, Xinjiang

Lop Nur is located in the eastern part of the Tarim Basin in Xinjiang, China, and is the easternmost edge of the Taklimakan Desert, the world's second largest mobile desert. The Chinese discovered a super-large sulfate-type potassium brine deposit in Lop Nur, known as the "Sea of ​​Death", and mined and produced potassium sulfate.

The world's largest single potassium sulfate production base has produced more than 18 million tons of potassium sulfate, effectively alleviating the contradiction between supply and demand of potash fertilizers in China and increasing China's potash fertilizer self-sufficiency rate to 50%. (Xinhua News Agency reporter Guan Qiaoqiao, Shang Sheng and Bai Zhiqiang)

"Seawater Rice" Fangling Reclamation Area

⊹ Location: Fangling Reclamation Area, Cangcha Town, Rudong County, Jiangsu Province

This is one of the five experimental demonstration planting bases of Yuan Longping's "seawater rice" team. The soil salt content is between 2/1000 and 6/1000. Currently, 7 salt-tolerant rice varieties have been successfully planted.

In 2020, the first batch of salt-tolerant rice planted in the reclamation area yielded a bumper harvest of nearly 130 mu, with an average yield of 802.9 kg per mu, setting a new record for the high yield of "sea rice" in saline-alkali land at that time. In 2021, the three varieties of salt-tolerant rice commissioned by Yuan Longping's team, totaling about 90 mu, all had a bumper harvest, with an average yield of more than 700 kg per mu. The planting base currently has about 4,000 mu of saline-alkali improved fields to be "reclaimed", and the soil of these improved fields can be used for trial planting of various salt-tolerant rice varieties.

"Sea rice" refers to a rice variety that can grow in saline-alkali land with a certain concentration. (Xinhua News Agency reporter He Leijing)

Tencent Seven Star Data Center

⊹ Location: Gui'an New District, Guizhou

This is a hub of China's "East Data West Computing" project, which is promoting the layout of large data centers in regions with abundant renewable energy and suitable climate and geological conditions.

Tencent Qixing Data Center covers an area of ​​more than 700 mu, of which the tunnel area exceeds 30,000 square meters. It has five holes dug between the hills, each with a vertical shaft for ventilation. The data center is hidden in the tunnel through a heavy air-raid door.

It is reported that the use of the mountain not only achieves natural physical isolation from the outside world, but also uses the temperature environment for natural heat exchange, greatly reducing the power consumption of refrigeration. (Xinhua News Agency reporter Xiang Dingjie)

High Altitude Cosmic Ray Observatory

⊹ Location: Haizi Mountain, Daocheng County, Ganzi Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan Province

This ground-based particle detector array, covering an area of ​​1.36 square kilometers and located at an altitude of 4,410 meters, is abbreviated as "LHASSO". Its scientific goal is to explore the origin of high-energy cosmic rays and related research on the evolution of the universe, the evolution of high-energy celestial bodies and dark matter.

Cosmic rays are extraterrestrial visitors to Earth, called "galactic meteorites". They are "messengers" that transmit major cosmic events, carrying important scientific information such as the origin of the universe, celestial evolution, solar activity, and the Earth's space environment.

The observatory has not yet been completed in 2021, but it has already detected the highest energy gamma-ray photons known to mankind, providing a rare opportunity to explore the basic laws of physics. (LHASSO official website)

Ali Primordial Gravitational Wave Observatory

⊹ Location: Shiquanhe Town, Ali Prefecture, Tibet

The altitude here is 5,250 meters, with clear skies and dry climate. Once the observatory is completed, it will open a new window for observations of ground-based primordial gravitational waves in the northern sky.

Contemporary cosmology believes that the universe began with inflation. General relativity predicts that the violent expansion of space-time during inflation will produce primordial gravitational waves, the physical essence of which is the quantum fluctuations of space-time itself during inflation.

Primordial gravitational waves are the only effective way to test inflation and other candidate early cosmological theories, such as rebound and cycle models, and explore the origin of the universe. They are known as the "holy grail" of contemporary cosmology. Internationally, primordial gravitational waves have not been observed so far, and are a hot frontier in cosmology. (Official website of the Chinese Academy of Sciences)

Planning: Wang Jinye

Co-ordinator: Quan Xiaoshuwei, Tiemin Cheng Yingshanxu

Planning/copywriting: Zhou Zhou

Map: Wang Tingting, Feng Chun, Wang Jiadong

Editor: Lu Ye

Xinhua News Agency External

Xinhua News Agency Satellite News Laboratory

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Produced by Xinhua News Agency's International Communication Integration Platform