China launches Beidou G7 navigation and positioning satellite

13 Jun 2016

1

China launched its Beidou G7 navigation and positioning satellite at 15:30 UTC yesterday, on the top of a Long March 3C rocket from the Xichang Satellite Launch Centre in Sichuan Province.

The satellite, which is the 23rd of the Beidou constellation (BDS) also called Compass Navigation Satellite System (CNSS) would enter a geostationary orbit nearly 36,000 kilometres above the earth.

China's state news agency Xinhua said the satellite would, after entering its designed work orbit and finishing in-orbit testing, improve the stability of the system, preparing for BDS to offer global coverage.

The mission was China's seventh this year and the 229th in the Long March family of launch vehicles.

China's next launch was expected to be the debut flight of a Long March 7 cryogenic rocket from the new Wenchang Satellite Launch Centre.

China's BDS is similar to that of the US (GPS), Russia's GLONASS, and the European Galileo positioning, navigation and timing satellite constellations.

Receivers for Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) signals are used extensively in cars, aviation, shipping, and mobile phones for navigation and tracking. GNSS receivers using GPS, GLONASS, Galileo or Beidou system find use in many applications.

The launch further supplements China's Compass Navigation Satellite System (CNSS), which is the country's  second-generation satellite navigation system approved by the Chinese government in 2004. The CNSS is capable of providing continuous, real-time passive 3D geo-spatial positioning and speed measurement.

The system started off providing high-accuracy positioning services for users in China and its neighboring regions, and covered an area of about 120 degrees longitude in the Northern Hemisphere. The long-term goal was to develop a global navigation satellite network similar to the GPS and GLONASS by 2020.

The system would offer two kinds of services: a civilian service that with an accuracy of 10 meters in the user position, 0.2 m/s on the user velocity and 50 nanoseconds in time accuracy; and the military and authorised user's service, providing higher accuracies.

In the first phase, the project would see the coverage of the Chinese territory but in the future CNSS would cover the entire globe.

Business History Videos

History of hovercraft Part 3...

Today I shall talk a bit more about the military plans for ...

By Kiron Kasbekar | Presenter: Kiron Kasbekar

History of hovercraft Part 2...

In this episode of our history of hovercraft, we shall exam...

By Kiron Kasbekar | Presenter: Kiron Kasbekar

History of Hovercraft Part 1...

If you’ve been a James Bond movie fan, you may recall seein...

By Kiron Kasbekar | Presenter: Kiron Kasbekar

History of Trams in India | ...

The video I am presenting to you is based on a script writt...

By Aniket Gupta | Presenter: Sheetal Gaikwad

view more