The QUEST project was jointly proposed by Qilu Normal University and the National Astronomical Observatories, Chinese Academy of Sciences. The array consists of sixteen 4.5-meter radio telescopes located on the campus of Qilu Normal University, connected to four additional radio telescopes deployed at the National Supercomputing Center in Jinan.

Figure 1. The radio telescopes located on the campus of Qilu Normal University and National Supercomputing Center in Jinan.

    In the future, the plan is to construct a QUEST array comprising 800 five-meter-class radio telescopes distributed across the 16 prefecture-level cities of Shandong Province, forming a 500-kilometer baseline that covers the entire region. Working in coordination with Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST) and the planned FASTA project, the array will enhance the sensitivity and spatial resolution of both FAST and FASTA. It will also serve to test and verify key SKA-related technologies such as beamforming and interferometric imaging, while accumulating valuable experience in array construction. Ultimately, this effort aims to enable high-resolution “imaging” of the universe in the radio band and to achieve world-leading observational capabilities in both sensitivity and resolution for detecting fast radio bursts (FRBs) and other transient sources, paving the way for major scientific discoveries.