MOSCOW (Sputnik) — Scientists and reporters have gathered for a completing ceremony at the site of the telescope, the CCTV broadcaster reported.
World's largest radio telescope #FAST with a 4,450-panel reflector officially put into use in SW China, hunting for ET life pic.twitter.com/NgT0Mu0idT
— China Xinhua News (@XHNews) 25 сентября 2016 г.
Located in a natural depression in the mountains of Pingtang County, Guizhou Province, the construction takes up the space equal to 30 football fields. A total of 1.2 billion yuan (almost $180 million at the current exchange rate) have been invested in the project since 2011.
With the project first proposed in 1994, construction began in 2011 and was completed in July 2016, when testing commenced.
Despite its name, the telescope uses a circle of 300 meters (1,000 feet) of the total 500 meters to probe the distant universe. While the largest filled aperture telescope, it is second in size to Russia's RATAN-600, which is a sparsely filled aperture telescope and has a diameter of 576 meters.
