JIUQUAN, Gansu, Dec. 17 (China Space News) -- China on Thursday sent into space the country's first space telescope in a fresh search for smoking-gun signals of dark matter, invisible material that scientists say makes up most of the universe's mass.

The Dark Matter Particle Explorer (DAMPE) Satellite, nicknamed "Wukong" after the Monkey King with penetrating eyes in the Chinese classical fiction Journey to the West, was blasted off Thursday morning on a Long March 2-D rocket from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center.

It will enter a sun-synchronous orbit at a height of 500 kilometers to observe the direction, energy and electric charge of high-energy particles in space.