Skip to main content

New story in Technology from Time: China Says It Has Completed a Navigation Network That Could Rival the U.S. GPS



(BEIJING) — China is celebrating the completion of its BeiDou Navigation Satellite System that could rival the U.S. Global Positioning System and significantly boost China’s security and geopolitical clout.

President Xi Jinping, the leader of the ruling Communist Party and the People’s Liberation Army, officially commissioned the system Friday at a ceremony at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.

That followed a declaration that the 55th and final geostationary satellite in the constellation launched June 23 was operating after having completed all tests.

The satellite is part of the third iteration of the Beidou system known as BDS-3, which began providing navigation services in 2018 to countries taking part in China’s sprawling “Belt and Road” infrastructure initiative along with others.

As well as being a navigation aid with an extremely high degree of accuracy, the system offers short message communication of up to 1,200 Chinese characters and the ability to transmit images.

While China says it seeks cooperation with other satellite navigation systems, Beidou could ultimately compete against GPS, Russia’s GLONASS and the European Union’s Galileo networks. That’s similar to how Chinese mobile phone makers and other producers of technically sophisticated hardware have taken on their foreign rivals.

Among the chief advantages for China is the ability to replace GPS for guiding its missiles, especially important now amid rising tensions with Washington.

It also stands to raise China’s economic and political leverage over nations adopting the system, ensuring that they line up behind China’s position on Taiwan, Tibet the South China Sea and other sensitive matters or risk losing their access.

China’s space program has advanced rapidly since becoming only the third country to fly a crewed mission in 2003 and the country this month launched an orbiter, lander and rover to Mars. If successful, it would make China the only other country besides the U.S. to land on Mars.

China has also constructed an experimental space station and sent a pair of rovers to the surface of the moon. Future plans call for a fully functioning permanent space station and a possible crewed flight to the moon.

The program has suffered some setbacks, including launch failures, and has had limited cooperation with other countries’ space efforts, in part because of U.S. objections to its close connections to the Chinese military.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Slashdot: US Plans $825 Million Investment For New York Semiconductor R&D Facility

US Plans $825 Million Investment For New York Semiconductor R&D Facility Published on November 02, 2024 at 03:00AM The Biden administration is investing $825 million in a new semiconductor research and development facility in Albany, New York. Reuters reports: The New York facility will be expected to drive innovation in EUV technology, a complex process necessary to make semiconductors, the U.S. Department of Commerce and Natcast, operator of the National Semiconductor Technology Center (NTSC) said. The launch of the facility "represents a key milestone in ensuring the United States remains a global leader in innovation and semiconductor research and development," Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said. From the U.S. Department of Commerce press release: EUV Lithography is essential for manufacturing smaller, faster, and more efficient microchips. As the semiconductor industry pushes the limits of Moore's Law, EUV lithography has emerged as a critical technology to ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Slashdot: AT&T, T-Mobile Prep First RedCap 5G IoT Devices

AT&T, T-Mobile Prep First RedCap 5G IoT Devices Published on October 15, 2024 at 03:20AM The first 5G Internet of Things (IoT) devices are launching soon. According to Fierce Wireless, T-Mobile plans to launch its first RedCap devices by the end of the year, while AT&T's devices are expected sometime in 2025. From the report: All of this should pave the way for higher performance 5G gadgets to make an impact in the world of IoT. RedCap, which stands for reduced capabilities, was introduced as part of the 3GPP's Release 17 5G standard, which was completed -- or frozen in 3GPP terms -- in mid-2022. The specification, which is also called NR-Light, is the first 5G-specific spec for IoT. RedCap promises to offer data transfer speeds of between 30 Mbps to 80 Mbps. The RedCap spec greatly reduces the bandwidth needed for 5G, allowing the signal to run in a 20 MHz channel rather than the 100 MHz channel required for full scale 5G communications. Read more of this story at...
Post a Comment
Read more

Slashdot: Texas A&M University Tops Nation in Engineering Research Expenditures

Texas A&M University Tops Nation in Engineering Research Expenditures Published on June 19, 2024 at 12:50AM An anonymous reader shares a report: Texas A&M University held the largest engineering research portfolio of any academic institution in the country last year, nearing half a billion dollars and surpassing Massachusetts Institute of Technology for the top spot, according to U.S. News & World Report. The state flagship's College of Engineering recorded $444.7 million in research expenditures in the 2023 fiscal year, university officials said. A mix of federal, state and private grants funds those efforts, so more expenditures means more partnerships and a larger engineering footprint than ever, Texas A&M University System Chancellor John Sharp said. "An awful lot of people in Washington, a lot of people in Austin, a lot of people in the private sector now rely on Texas A&M to do their engineering research," Sharp said. "Of all the places in...
Post a Comment
Read more