According to Chinese officials China plans to launch 10 Compass satellites during the next two years using the Long-March 3 rocket launcher. After the launch of the first test satellite in April 2007, called COMPASS-M1, this would be the real start of this interesting GNSS system.
China plans to establish an independent global satellite navigation system, called COMPASS/BeiDou-2, by launching 30 satellites before 2015. The system will make China independent from foreign systems like GPS, GLONASS, and Galileo. The 2015 time frame is similar to the current European Galileo time schedule, so it will be an interesting "battle" who will have the system fully operational first! European officials have been surprised to learn that the first Compass/Beidou medium Earth satellite, COMPASS-M1 launched on April 14, 2007, is providing substantially better atomic-clock timing precision than was expected. China had purchased atomic clocks from a Swiss company, but these were said at the time to be an older technology.
If the Chinese are serious about launching 10 Long-March 3 rockets with Compass satellites there should be a launch soon! Actually a launch was expected in December 2008 but that did not take place. So lets wait and see what happens!
Monday, 19 January 2009
COMPASS/BeiDou Status
posted by Springinhetveld at
12:26
8 Comments:
I had no idea China was working to get that many up. Thanks for writing so that we non rocket scientists can read it.
25 January 2009 at 05:14
This sounds like the beginning of the space race with China.
25 January 2009 at 18:04
very informative... P40,000 is about $1,000... ty for the comment and the visit n my blog.
26 January 2009 at 02:30
very well said.
26 January 2009 at 05:57
A very worthwhile site. One that lives up to its name...
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26 January 2009 at 20:14
I had no idea about that as well.. It's nice to learn something new each day.. Thanks for the interesting post..
28 January 2009 at 02:03
It is amazing that the bank of china will soon be closed to american government or we will in debt our childern for ever
28 January 2009 at 17:44
great blog, i love this one
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22 March 2009 at 15:27
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