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CHINA-SATELLITE-WIRELESS
China launches final satellite to complete rival to GPS
BEIJING, June 23, 2020 (BSS/AFP) – China on Tuesday launched the final
satellite in its homegrown geolocation system designed to rival the US GPS
network, marking a major step in its race for market share in the lucrative
sector.
Footage from state broadcaster CCTV of the launch in southwestern Sichuan
province showed the rocket blast off against a backdrop of lush mountains as a
small group of onlookers filmed on their phones.
The launch of the Beidou-3GEO3 satellite from the Xichang Satellite Launch
Center was originally scheduled for last Tuesday but was delayed over
unspecified “technical issues,” China’s space agency said.
Completing the satellite network makes China a key player in the billion-
dollar geolocation services market, observers said.
Beidou — named after the Chinese term for the plough or “Big Dipper”
constellation — is intended to rival the US’s Global Positioning System
(GPS), Russia’s GLONASS and the European Union’s Galileo.
“I think the Beidou-3 system being operational is a big event,” Jonathan
McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics,
told AFP.
“This is a big investment from China and makes China independent of US and
European systems.”
China started building its global navigation system in the early 1990s to
help cars, fishing boats and military tankers navigate using mapping data from
the country’s own satellites.
Now the service can be used on millions of mobile phones to find nearby
restaurants, petrol stations or cinemas, to guide taxis and missiles and fly
unmanned drones.
The coverage provided by Beidou, which has been in commercial use since
2012, was first limited to the Asia-Pacific region, but worldwide service has
been available since 2018.
The system works on a network of about 30 satellites.
Around 120 countries including Pakistan and Thailand are using Beidou’s
services for port traffic monitoring, to guide rescue operations during
disasters and other services, according to Chinese state media.
Beijing is counting on its trillion-dollar Belt and Road global
infrastructure project to convince other participating countries to use its
technology as it attempts to grab market share from GPS — although some
experts have cast doubt on its ability to do so.
McDowell told AFP he did not think Beidou would be able to “supplant GPS in
the next 10 or even 20 years”.
BSS/AFP/MMA/1000HRS