Navigation Satellites by China

If you are a fan of Person of Interest TV series, you’d probably be aware of the snooping and surveillance systems setup illegally by many governments across the world. All your messages, Facebook accounts, photos, phone calls and even VOIP calls are being constantly monitored by some governmental agencies , in the name of prevention of terrorism.

Some governments may have the resources to track the whole country’s data and uses advanced algorithms to detect red flags and act on it before some calamity occurs. China is one country among other communist nations that has taken security concerns quite seriously and has basically restricted access for several websites to a lot of people. Even the famous Google is not accessible by people in China and has to settle for their local equivalent

Taking things further, I was quite surprised to see the latest initiative by China .Earlier , Chinese satellites were primarily used to focus on the Chinese regions and mainland. They were able to pinpoint to a fair bit of accuracy and could trace anything given the coordinates.

Their ambition has just made it possible for them to launch 40 more Beidou satellites in the next five years, in order to enhance and support their Global navigation and positioning networks. This move is a direct challenge on United States domination of satellite networks, navigation and Global Positioning Systems till now

The first of this series of  next generation Beidou Navigation Satellites was launched the first week of February in addition to the 20 Beidou satellites that’s already in orbit

The director of the China Satellite Navigation System had also announced that 18 more satellites will be launched into orbit in the next two years. He also added that the positioning accuracy of a Beidou satellite had a positioning accuracy of just 5 meters within China which was a massive feat in itself.
The additional 20 satellites would expand their coverage from a local positioning and tracking to a global coverage with a positioning accuracy of 10 meters or less with a timing accuracy of just 20 NanoSeconds. This phenomenal technology leap could actually give China, a superpower status it was always vying for

US Air Force incidentally has a GPS network of a constellation of 24 satellites orbiting around the world at a distance of 20,000 kms from the earth. It circles twice a day around their six orbits providing continuous coverage

The fifth generation Beidou satellites, once put in orbit will test a inter-satellite crosslinkage and a new navigation system that can define new technical standards for global coverage. China also has ambitious plans to expand its current local coverage to many other countries surrounding it within the next two years and a global coverage in less than 5 years