China has completed the installation of the world's largest radio telescope, which will start its hunt for extraterrestrial life as soon as September.

The massive Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) cost $180 million to construct and, as the name suggests, is 500 meters wide, which is about as big as 30 football fields, to put things into perspective.

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The project, which is located in the hills of Pingtang County in China's southwestern province of Guizhou, is finally ready after the last of the 4,450 panels were installed into the center of the telescope's big dish on Sunday.

"The project has the potential to search for more strange objects to better understand the origin of the universe and boost the global hunt for extraterrestrial life," said Zheng Xiaonian, deputy head of the National Astronomical Observation under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, which was in charge of the telescope's construction.

FAST is now the world's biggest telescope, followed by the Puerto Rico's Arecibo Observatory, which has a diameter of approximately 300m.

The reflector, which took five years to build, will undergo a series of trials and is expected to be operational in two months.

China's space programmes, which include sending a man to the moon by 2036 and construction a space station, has been one of the top priorities of President Xi Jinping, who has voiced his ambition for the country to establish itself as a space superpower.

Beijing insists that the space program will be used for peaceful purposes, but the US Defence Department claims the advancements were aimed to "prevent adversaries from using space-based assets in a crisis."

Tagschina, FAST telescope, World's biggest telescope, Five hundred meter aperture spherical telescope, China Telescope