As China discreetly moves forward with plans for what could be the largest telescope in the world, astronomers are taken aback.

China has been performing remarkably well in space developments. A mission to gather samples from a nearby asteroid with an estimated $538 billion in value was just started by the China National Space Administration (CNSA). This came after China’s bold ambitions to use the Chang’e-8 spacecraft to construct a nuclear power plant on the moon.

The country is currently building what may soon be the biggest optical telescope in the world, if not the Northern Hemisphere. Plans for the 14.5-meter Large Optical Telescope (LOT), which will be located high on the Tibetan Plateau, have been closely guarded.

Official information is only briefly mentioned in Chinese academic abstracts and state media coverage due to an unusually high level of secrecy.

“As far as I can tell, it’s real. And it will certainly put China in the big leagues,” said Robert Kirshner, a cosmologist at Harvard University and executive director of the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT), a major US-led observatory project.

A representative for the National Astronomical Observatories of China (NAOC) told Science that LOT should be up and running by 2030.

The NAOC representative also refused to provide any details, stating only that “specific details of the project are still subject to further study.” Saishiteng Mountain, a 4,500-meter peak close to the isolated hamlet of Lenghu in Qinghai province, will feature LOT as its focal point and serve as China’s newest observatory hub.

A 2 billion RMB (around $277 million) investment in nine telescopic projects in Lenghu was announced by NAOC in 2023.

However, LOT is predicted to surpass them all, displacing the current 6.5-meter survey telescope that studies dark energy and extrasolar planets, as well as the 2.5-meter Wide Field Survey Telescope that is used to detect supernovae and near-Earth asteroids.

By November 2024, a Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) business had been given a contract to build LOT’s dome for 159 million RMB, or about $22 million.

The complete specifications of the telescope have not been made public by NAOC or the primary developer, Nanjing Institute of Astronomical Optics and Technology (NIAOT) of CAS. We do know that it will be able to observe infrared and optical wavelengths.

Sources suggest LOT will feature an imaging spectrograph, capable of taking detailed images while splitting the light into spectra that reveal the chemical makeup of planets and stars. “This kind of instrument is usually a workhorse that can do many different kinds of science,” says a US-based astronomer who asked to remain anonymous.

Kirshner describes China’s effort as a ‘wakeup call for American science.’ He added, “I don’t mean to scare people, but we really need to get moving.”