China's domestic gravitational wave research project, "Tianqin," is likely to launch high-orbit satellites to detect gravitational waves by 2030, reports the Guangzhou Daily.

The plan has been unveiled at a symposium connected to the "Tianqin" program at the Xiangshan Science Conference in Guangzhou, Guangdong Province. More than 20 scientific research institutions and 40 experts from home and abroad attended the symposium.

The "Tianqin" program was launched by Guangzhou-based Sun Yat-sen University in 2015. With an estimated cost of 15 billion yuan (2.2 billion U.S. dollars), Chinese experts say "Tianqin" will be carried out in four stages over the next 15 to 20 years, including the last step of launching three high-orbit satellites to detect gravitational waves.

The U.S.-based Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) announced its ground-breaking discovery of gravitational waves in February 2016, which verified the predictions in Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity a century ago. "Tianqin", however, is set to study the gravitational waves in the space, which is different from research made by the U.S. ground-based observatory.

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