Leading Science and Technology Stories

The Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Engineering published a list of the top ten science and technology news events of 2012. Below is the Xinhua News Agency’s version of the list, with stylistic modification:

Jiaolong submarine.
Source: News.cn

Successful docking between Tiangong-1 and Shenzhou-9.
Source: News.cn

• On 24 June, three Chinese astronauts successfully completed a manual docking between the Shenzhou-9 spacecraft and the orbiting Tiangong-1 lab module — the first such attempt in China’s history of space exploration.
• China’s manned submersible, the Jiaolong, set a new national dive record after reaching more than 7,000 metres below sea level during its dive tests in the Pacific Ocean in June.
• The world’s first high-speed railway in areas with extremely low temperatures, the Harbin–Dalian rail, which runs through three provinces in northeast China, started operation on 1 December.
• On 6 February, China published a set of full coverage moon maps and moon images with a resolution of seven metres captured by the country’s second moon orbiter, the Chang’e-2.
• 

  Sunway BlueLight supercomputer.
  Source: News.cn

  On 11 September, the Sunway BlueLight supercomputer, which was built with domestically produced microprocessors and is capable of performing around 1,000 trillion calculations per second, passed the test of an expert panel organised by the Ministry of Science and Technology.

• On 29 July, China successfully conducted tests on its new 120-tonne-thrust liquid oxygen and kerosene engine for its new generation carrier rocket, the Long March-5.
• Research led by Professor Pan Jianwei on the experimental demonstration of topological error correction with an eight-photon cluster state marked a breakthrough in quantum information processing research. The results of the research were published by the journal Nature in February.
• 

  Asia’s biggest radio telescope in Shanghai.
  Source: News.cn

  Chinese and foreign physicists confirmed and measured a third type of neutrino oscillation during the Daya Bay Reactor Neutrino Experiment. This was announced on 8 March.

• The Ministry of Science and Technology announced on 11 January that the country has approved a Hepatitis E vaccine developed by researchers from Xiamen University and Xiamen Innovax Biotech Co. Ltd. in Fujian province.
• On 28 October, China unveiled Asia’s biggest radio telescope in Shanghai, which is used to track and collect data from satellites and space probes.