China's Space Program News Thread

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Ali Qizilbash

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Britain considers setting up satellite system to rival EU's Galileo
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Very interesting.
By 2020, there would be 4 global satellites navigation systems in service (GPS, Glonass, Beidou and Galileo) and then by 2030 could have 5!

Yup very interesting if they can survive Brexit and aren't broke by 2030.
 

antiterror13

Brigadier
Any idea what the latest news/progress the frequencies issues between Galileo and Beidou ?

For the reference, even quite old .. 9 years ago
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Galileo and the Chinese: one thing after another
by Taylor Dinerman
Monday, February 9, 2009

A number of sources now indicate that the Chinese are refusing to change the frequencies they plan to use for their new and improved Beidou (Compass) satellite navigation system. This creates a big, big problem for their estranged European partners in the Galileo consortium. Reports from the recent International Committee on Global Navigation Satellite Systems (ICG) meeting, held in December 2008 in Pasadena, indicate that while the US was able to reach an agreement with China on a few minor issues, Europe was unable to get China to change its plans to use a frequency that will render the Galileo Public Regulated Service (PRS) signals pretty much useless for military purposes unless China first gives permission. This is the so-called frequency overlay issue.
If things continue as they are, a system that was intended, as former French President Jacques Chirac said, to prevent Europe from becoming the “technological vassal” of the Americans, has now produced a situation where the European Union (EU) is going to be subservient to the Chinese. Reports have it that the Europeans were very angry, but what did they expect?
The Chinese feel that they were badly used and partly humiliated by Europe. They were brought into the Galileo consortium as partners, and they paid the EU for the privilege, only to see themselves shut out of Galileo’s controlling bodies. Some in Europe hoped that by bringing the Chinese into the system they would lay the basis for a China-EU entente aimed at weakening the US. Yet at the end of the day China would have had less influence over Galileo than Japan and India have over GPS, and those two nations have not paid the US a single dime for their cooperation in the signal augmentation systems they are now building.
No one should dream of underestimating the determination of the EU’s ruling elite to build Galileo. However, the project’s delays and cost overruns are raising some interesting possibilities.
Even more interesting is the story that the Europeans are not only mad at the Chinese, they are also mad at the Americans. Washington has refused to put pressure on Beijing to comply with their wishes. This is ironic, of course, in that Galileo was not exactly conceived with the best interests of the United States in mind. It seems that some EU negotiators even threatened to pull out of the 2004 US-European agreement on the frequency overlay issue—not exactly the best way to begin their relationship with the new Obama Administration.
No one should dream of underestimating the determination of the EU’s ruling elite to build Galileo. They have long seen it as a cornerstone of the new European entity they hope will become the most important superpower in what they expect will be a “Post-American” world. They will pursue it even if it hurts their relations with both the US and China. It has taken on a symbolic value all its own, and thus no matter what happens economically and diplomatically the show will go on.
However, the project’s delays and cost overruns are raising some interesting possibilities. Russia is rapidly rebuilding its GLONASS system and it will soon be back in full operation and for certain Arctic applications it may even be superior to GPS. Japan’s Quasi-Zenith Satellite System (QZSS) operates as a highly effective augmentation to GPS and provides Japan with all the technological benefits that Europe claims Galileo will give them at a much lower cost, economically and politically.
China has, according to reliable reports, made impressive advances with their advanced second generation system. It may turn out that the Beidou constellation will be operational before Galileo. This should not be a real surprise since the cumbersome EU decision-making and budgeting process is no match for China’s centralized governing system. What may be more of a surprise is that China seems to be able to match the accuracies of both the US GPS and the ones Galileo hopes to attain. If confirmed, this will raise some interesting questions inside the US and Europe as to how they were able to master the technology so quickly.
Funding Galileo in the current economic downturn may present the EU leaders with new challenges. After they discovered that no commercial firm was willing to put its own money into the system, they reprogrammed funds from the European Union’s famous Common Agricultural Program (CAP) that they thought were not going to be needed for price support payments to farmers due to high worldwide demand. Now that the demand, and the high prices that went along with it, have disappeared, will the farmers be looking to somehow recover these resources?
Decades from now it may be that people will see Galileo as having been a wise investment, one that gave Europe a valuable tool with which to assert itself on the world stage. Or, perhaps, not.
 

taxiya

Brigadier
Registered Member
Any idea what the latest news/progress the frequencies issues between Galileo and Beidou ?

For the reference, even quite old .. 9 years ago
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!


Galileo and the Chinese: one thing after another
by Taylor Dinerman
Monday, February 9, 2009

A number of sources now indicate that the Chinese are refusing to change the frequencies they plan to use for their new and improved Beidou (Compass) satellite navigation system. This creates a big, big problem for their estranged European partners in the Galileo consortium. Reports from the recent International Committee on Global Navigation Satellite Systems (ICG) meeting, held in December 2008 in Pasadena, indicate that while the US was able to reach an agreement with China on a few minor issues, Europe was unable to get China to change its plans to use a frequency that will render the Galileo Public Regulated Service (PRS) signals pretty much useless for military purposes unless China first gives permission. This is the so-called frequency overlay issue.
If things continue as they are, a system that was intended, as former French President Jacques Chirac said, to prevent Europe from becoming the “technological vassal” of the Americans, has now produced a situation where the European Union (EU) is going to be subservient to the Chinese. Reports have it that the Europeans were very angry, but what did they expect?
The Chinese feel that they were badly used and partly humiliated by Europe. They were brought into the Galileo consortium as partners, and they paid the EU for the privilege, only to see themselves shut out of Galileo’s controlling bodies. Some in Europe hoped that by bringing the Chinese into the system they would lay the basis for a China-EU entente aimed at weakening the US. Yet at the end of the day China would have had less influence over Galileo than Japan and India have over GPS, and those two nations have not paid the US a single dime for their cooperation in the signal augmentation systems they are now building.
No one should dream of underestimating the determination of the EU’s ruling elite to build Galileo. However, the project’s delays and cost overruns are raising some interesting possibilities.
Even more interesting is the story that the Europeans are not only mad at the Chinese, they are also mad at the Americans. Washington has refused to put pressure on Beijing to comply with their wishes. This is ironic, of course, in that Galileo was not exactly conceived with the best interests of the United States in mind. It seems that some EU negotiators even threatened to pull out of the 2004 US-European agreement on the frequency overlay issue—not exactly the best way to begin their relationship with the new Obama Administration.
No one should dream of underestimating the determination of the EU’s ruling elite to build Galileo. They have long seen it as a cornerstone of the new European entity they hope will become the most important superpower in what they expect will be a “Post-American” world. They will pursue it even if it hurts their relations with both the US and China. It has taken on a symbolic value all its own, and thus no matter what happens economically and diplomatically the show will go on.
However, the project’s delays and cost overruns are raising some interesting possibilities. Russia is rapidly rebuilding its GLONASS system and it will soon be back in full operation and for certain Arctic applications it may even be superior to GPS. Japan’s Quasi-Zenith Satellite System (QZSS) operates as a highly effective augmentation to GPS and provides Japan with all the technological benefits that Europe claims Galileo will give them at a much lower cost, economically and politically.
China has, according to reliable reports, made impressive advances with their advanced second generation system. It may turn out that the Beidou constellation will be operational before Galileo. This should not be a real surprise since the cumbersome EU decision-making and budgeting process is no match for China’s centralized governing system. What may be more of a surprise is that China seems to be able to match the accuracies of both the US GPS and the ones Galileo hopes to attain. If confirmed, this will raise some interesting questions inside the US and Europe as to how they were able to master the technology so quickly.
Funding Galileo in the current economic downturn may present the EU leaders with new challenges. After they discovered that no commercial firm was willing to put its own money into the system, they reprogrammed funds from the European Union’s famous Common Agricultural Program (CAP) that they thought were not going to be needed for price support payments to farmers due to high worldwide demand. Now that the demand, and the high prices that went along with it, have disappeared, will the farmers be looking to somehow recover these resources?
Decades from now it may be that people will see Galileo as having been a wise investment, one that gave Europe a valuable tool with which to assert itself on the world stage. Or, perhaps, not.
I think from a regulatory (through treaties and international organization) perspective, the issue has ended. The principle is "first use, first own". China put that frequency in use before EU, making it owned by China.

Of course, in case of war, the regulatory rules would be less meaningful. In that case, EU may forcefully utilize the preferred frequency which overlap with BDS IF Galileo satellites kept HW capability to use it (likely so). That will interfere BDS in the same vicinity making both unworkable. In this sense, the issue is not solved, and probably never will. It is not a real issue so long as EU and China are not at odds.
 

taxiya

Brigadier
Registered Member
Britain considers setting up satellite system to rival EU's Galileo
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Very interesting.
By 2020, there would be 4 global satellites navigation systems in service (GPS, Glonass, Beidou and Galileo) and then by 2030 could have 5!
The EU's "blocking" UK in Galileo work is due to the fact that as a non EU member, any work (product or service) from UK to EU is export subjected to tariff. It is something EADS (airbus) does not want. It is natural business choice.

As of UK's rival GNSS system, I have to say there is no way UK can do that because of lack of the full spectrum of industry foundation, nor is there any real need. UK will have to form a working relationship with either Galileo or GPS. The article is misleading (exaggerating) in the backdrop of Brexit.
 

Lethe

Captain
As always, the UK wants the benefits of the EU without the responsibilities of the EU.

If they really want to, they could build a regional network similar to Japan's or India's. The Treasury might have something to say about it though.
 
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taxiya

Brigadier
Registered Member
As always, the UK wants the benefits of the EU without the responsibilities of the EU.

If they really want to flush more money down the toilet they could build a regional network similar to Japan's or India's.
Just a clarification. Only India's system is a regional system, it works in the same principle as BDS version 1. It consists GEO sats which triangulate the location of the terminal without any other system. The Japanese system is only augmentation to GPS, it can not provide location service on its own.

Japan's system is to mitigate the blocking effect of high rise buildings, a pure commercial application. UK has much less high rise buildings in cities and no mega cities like Tokyo. So this path has no value to UK.

The Indian system is much less accurate compared to GPS, Galileo and BDS, and has almost zero value in military application. We are talking about less than 5 meters vs. 20 meters. The terminal is in the range of shoe box vs. wrist watch. UK is not going through this path when GPS or Galileo is available. Either way, UK is tied to US or EU to remain geopolitical relevant.
 

antiterror13

Brigadier
As always, the UK wants the benefits of the EU without the responsibilities of the EU.

If they really want to, they could build a regional network similar to Japan's or India's. The Treasury might have something to say about it though.

But can the UK develop high precision atomic clock for the satellites? just let say the EU refuse to sell ones to the UK ;) .. but China would be happy selling ones to the UK
 

taxiya

Brigadier
Registered Member
But can the UK develop high precision atomic clock for the satellites? just let say the EU refuse to sell ones to the UK ;) .. but China would be happy selling ones to the UK
Galileo sats use Swiss made atomic clock both "hydrogen maser" which is the master clock and "rubidium clock" the slave. Switzerland is not EU member but ESA member. So UK would not have problem buying the clocks with market price.
 

Hendrik_2000

Lieutenant General
OneSpace Technology, China's first private rocket producer, launched the company's OS-X0 solid-fuel rocket--the country's first carrier rocket entirely designed and built by a private company, at 7:33 am (Beijing time) on Thursday at a test field in northwestern China

DdW49BcU8AATdFY.jpg
 

Hendrik_2000

Lieutenant General
Chinese private firm launches first space rocket via don Juan
701908_img650x420_img650x420_crop.jpg


Agence France Presse

BEIJING: A suborbital rocket was launched into space Thursday by a start-up in China's burgeoning commercial aeronautics industry, as private firms snap at the heels of their dominant American rivals.

OneSpace, the Beijing-based start-up behind the launch, is one of dozens of Chinese firms jostling for a slice of the global space industry, estimated to be worth about $339 billion by Bank of America Merrill Lynch and currently dominated by U.S. firms SpaceX and Blue Origin.

Its nine-meter "Chongqing Liangjiang Star" rocket took off from an undisclosed test field in China's northwest and reached an altitude of 273 kilometers before falling back to Earth, the company said in a statement.

The launch aimed to demonstrate an early working model of the company's OS-X series of rockets, designed to conduct research linked to suborbital flights.

By the end of the decade OneSpace expects to build 20 of the OS-X rockets, which would be capable of placing 100-kilogram payload into an orbit 800 kilometers from the Earth's surface, said company spokesman Chen Jianglan.

The firm is also developing another type of rocket, the M-series, to compete in the growing microsatellite sector.

These small satellites are typically no larger than a shoebox and are used to monitor crops, weather patterns or disaster sites or used by universities for research purposes, according to Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

Microsatellites are cheaper to build and easier to deploy than traditional truck-sized versions and their launch has become an increasingly lucrative market, currently dominated by the Indian space program.

Chinese aerospace start-ups were eschewing the space travel ambitions of their U.S. rivals to compete for these lucrative microsatellite contracts, said McDowell.

SpaceOne's work has attracted the attention of several domestic and foreign clients, Chen told AFP, adding that "a number of satellite companies in Europe and Asia have approached us to establish strategic partnerships".

Once dominated by state research agencies and the military, China allowed private companies to enter the space industry to build and launch satellites in 2014.

Another Chinese start-up, iSpace, launched a suborbital rocket, the Hyperbola-1S, from a test field in the southern island of Hainan last month.

The rocket reached an altitude of 108 kilometers and served as a demonstration for its planned small launcher due to be completed by June 2019, the company's website said.

But Onespace maintains that their Thursday launch was the "first" privately-designed rocket, since its rocket was "designed from scratch" and had "stronger control capabilities" than the Hyperbola-1S.
 
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