The 24th Chinese Antarctic expedition will leave Shanghai within two weeks to set up the country's first astronomical telescope at the South Pole.

Officials said yesterday the trekkers will be aboard China's only polar-expedition vessel, Xuelong. "Hopefully, the Antarctic telescope will function as a space telescope," Yang Huigen, deputy director of the city-based Polar Research Institute of China, said in an earlier interview.

The institute officials have decided to place the telescope atop the Antarctic continent, or Dome A. They said there will be a set of four telescopes each of which has a diameter of 14.5 centimeters. So far, the facility has been transported to Shanghai from Nanjing, Jiangsu Province.

Overall, the set will cost more than one billion yuan (US$133 million).

(Shanghai Daily October 19, 2007)