The Chinese BeiDou (北斗) Navigation Satellite System would be complete this month when its final satellite goes into orbit, giving China greater independence from US-owned GPS and heating up competition in a sector long dominated by the US.
The idea to develop BeiDou took shape in the 1990s as the military sought to reduce reliance on the GPS run by the US Air Force.
When the first BeiDou satellites were launched in 2000, coverage was limited to China. As use of mobile devices expanded, China in 2003 tried to join the Galileo satellite navigation project proposed by the EU, but later pulled out to focus on BeiDou.
In the age of the iPhone, the second generation of BeiDou satellites went operational in 2012, covering the Asia-Pacific.
China began deploying the third generation of satellites aimed at global coverage in 2015.
The 35th and final BeiDou-3 satellite is to be launched this month — the day has yet to be announced — meaning BeiDou has more satellites in its system than GPS’ 31, and more than Galileo and Russia’s Glonass.
With estimated investment of US$10 billion, BeiDou would keep the communications network of the Chinese military secure, avoiding the risk of disruption to GPS in the extreme event of conflict.
Weapons targeting and guidance would also improve.
When complete, BeiDou’s location services would be accurate down to 10cm in the Asia-Pacific, compared with GPS’ 30cm range.
“BeiDou was obviously designed a few decades after GPS, so it has had the benefit of learning from the GPS experience,” Australian Centre for Space Engineering Research Director Andrew Dempster said. “It has some signals that have higher bandwidth, giving better accuracy. It has fewer orbit planes for the satellites, making constellation maintenance easier.”
BeiDou-related services such as port traffic monitoring and disaster mitigation have been exported to about 120 countries, state media reported.
Many of those countries are involved in the Belt and Road Initiative, spearheaded by Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to create a modern-day Silk Road of trade and investment.
In a report last year, the US congressional US-China Economic and Security Review Commission warned that China promoted launch services, satellites and BeiDou under its “Space Silk Road” to deepen reliance on China for space-based services, potentially at the expense of US influence.
In 2013, Thailand and Pakistan were the first foreign countries to sign up for BeiDou’s services.
Within China, more than 70 percent of mobile phones were BeiDou-enabled as of last year, state media reported.
China’s satellite navigation sector might top 400 billion yuan (US$56.47 billion) in value this year, state media said.
Ahead of BeiDou-3’s completion, satellite-related shares have soared. Beijing BDStar Navigation Co (北京北斗星通導航), which makes chips that receive BeiDou signals, has surged 34.4 percent this year.
TECH BOOST: New TSMC wafer fabs in Arizona are to dramatically improve US advanced chip production, a report by market research firm TrendForce said With Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) pouring large funds into Arizona, the US is expected to see an improvement in its status to become the second-largest maker of advanced semiconductors in 2027, Taipei-based market researcher TrendForce Corp (集邦科技) said in a report last week. TrendForce estimates the US would account for a 21 percent share in the global advanced integrated circuit (IC) production market by 2027, sharply up from the current 9 percent, as TSMC is investing US$65 billion to build three wafer fabs in Arizona, the report said. TrendForce defined the advanced chipmaking processes as the 7-nanometer process or more
China’s Huawei Technologies Co (華為) plans to start mass-producing its most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chip in the first quarter of next year, even as it struggles to make enough chips due to US restrictions, two people familiar with the matter said. The telecoms conglomerate has sent samples of the Ascend 910C — its newest chip, meant to rival those made by US chipmaker Nvidia Corp — to some technology firms and started taking orders, the sources told Reuters. The 910C is being made by top Chinese contract chipmaker Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯) on its N+2 process, but a lack
Who would not want a social media audience that grows without new content? During the three years she paused production of her short do-it-yourself (DIY) farmer’s lifestyle videos, Chinese vlogger Li Ziqi (李子柒), 34, has seen her YouTube subscribers increase to 20.2 million from about 14 million. While YouTube is banned in China, her fan base there — although not the size of YouTube’s MrBeast, who has 330 million subscribers — is close to 100 million across the country’s social media platforms Douyin (抖音), Sina Weibo (新浪微博) and Xiaohongshu (小紅書). When Li finally released new videos last week — ending what has
NVIDIA PLATFORM: Hon Hai’s Mexican facility is to begin production early next year and a Taiwan site is to enter production next month, Nvidia wrote on its blog Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), the world’s biggest electronics manufacturer, yesterday said it is expanding production capacity of artificial intelligence (AI) servers based on Nvidia Corp’s Blackwell chips in Taiwan, the US and Mexico to cope with rising demand. Hon Hai’s new AI-enabled factories are to use Nvidia’s Omnivores platform to create 3D digital twins to plan and simulate automated production lines at a factory in Hsinchu, the company said in a statement. Nvidia’s Omnivores platform is for developing industrial AI simulation applications and helps bring facilities online faster. Hon Hai’s Mexican facility is to begin production early next year and the
RSS