China science, technology news summary -- June 3

BEIJING, June 3 (Xinhua) -- The following is a summary of published science and technology news of China.

AVIATION MAINTENANCE

Construction has begun on an international aviation maintenance services platform belonging to China Eastern Airlines in the Yangshan special comprehensive bonded zone in east China's Shanghai Municipality.

The platform, which has an investment of 1.5 billion yuan (about 211 million U.S. dollars) and a total area of over 110,000 square meters, will include three hangars, as well as supporting workshops and facilities for accessory repair and refitting projects.

Fang Zhaoya, president of China Eastern's technology company, said that the platform's Hangar No.1 will be the largest hangar in Asia, and it will be able to accommodate nine wide-body aircraft undergoing maintenance simultaneously.

CHANG'E-6 INT'L PAYLOAD

After China's Chang'e-6 touched down on the far side of the moon Sunday morning to collect samples, foreign scientists participating in the mission expressed their excitement and thanks for taking their scientific instruments to the moon.

The Chang'e-6 mission carried four payloads developed through international cooperation, providing more opportunities for global scientists and merging human expertise in space exploration.

Scientific instruments from France, Italy and the European Space Agency (ESA)/Sweden are aboard the Chang'e-6 lander.

BRAIN-LIKE CHIP

A team of Chinese and Swiss scientists has jointly developed an energy-efficient sensing-computing neuromorphic chip that mimics the neurons and synapses of the human brain.

The researchers from the Institute of Automation under the Chinese Academy of Sciences and SynSense AG Corporation in Switzerland crafted this asynchronous chip, dubbed "Speck," which boasts an impressively low resting power consumption of just 0.42 milliwatts, meaning it consumes almost no energy when there is no input.