Wired: China's Beidou satnav system, 35th bird in orbit. Tired: America's GPS. Expired: Britain's dreams of its own
- Reference: 1592947045
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/06/23/china_beidou_gps/
- Source link:
The so-called BDS is now the fourth global satnav system up in space; the others being the United States' GPS, the somewhat incomplete Russian GLONASS network, and Europe’s [2]much-delayed Galileo effort.
The successful completion for China comes within days of the UK government reportedly abandoning its own effort to produce a geostationary satellite navigation system after Europe [3]booted Brexit Brits from its Galileo project.
China has been working for 20 years on the [4]Beidou system , and the launch of the latest orbiting sat represents a massive milestone for the country. The latest kit lifted off from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in the southwestern Sichuan province on top of a Long March 3B rocket.
Symbolism and influence
On a symbolic level, the completion of the constellation is another sign of China challenging US global dominance. Beidou will provide an alternative to America’s ubiquitous GPS in a way neither Russia’s nor Europe’s networks are right now able to. And China's already signing up customers for its sat system. BDS, we note, has more birds in orbit than Uncle Sam's GPS, and has extra coverage over south-east Asia.
This time last year, Galileo, which is still officially in beta, suffered a [5]massive outage that highlighted the [6]multitude of issues with the European effort, not least the competing organizations, bureaucracy, and lack of accountability that exists within the project.
One man's mistake, missing backups and complete reboot: The tale of Europe's Galileo satellites going dark [7]READ MORE
Despite those issues, Galileo was the UK’s only chance to be on the inside of a global positioning system, and the decision to leave the EU put an end to it. Initially, the British government [8]swore it would make its own version for £5bn. Reflecting the level of confidence in those plans, it was quickly dubbed by wags the Brexit Satellite, or BS, system.
And it turns out it was BS after all. Back in March, a report on how it was all going to work was [9]delayed , and then this week, word started [10]leaking that the whole plan was being scrapped. “We have made clear our ambitions for space, and are developing a new National Space Strategy to bring long-term strategic and commercial benefits to the UK,” a British government spokesperson told The Reg .
Beidou, meanwhile, has already picked up customers – Taiwan and Pakistan signed up back in 2013 – and the Chinese government has plans to sell access to at least 100 more countries, more than half the world. Satellites pretty much reflect the state of global politics and global power at the moment. ®
Sponsored: [11]Continuous Lifecycle Online, 15 July 2020. Register Now!
[1] https://www.theregister.com/2020/06/23/china_pakistan_beidou/
[2] https://www.theregister.com/2019/07/15/galileo_outage/
[3] https://www.theregister.com/2018/06/13/eu_uk_galileo/
[4] http://en.beidou.gov.cn/
[5] https://www.theregister.com/2019/07/15/galileo_outage/
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2019/11/08/galileo_satellites_outage/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2019/11/08/galileo_satellites_outage/
[8] https://www.gov.uk/government/news/space-sector-to-benefit-from-multi-million-pound-work-on-uk-alternative-to-galileo
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2020/03/02/brexit_satellite_delay/
[10] https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/jun/20/uk-seeking-to-scale-back-plans-for-independent-satnav-report-says
[11] https://go.theregister.com/tl/1968/shttps://www.bigmarker.com/series/continuous-lifecycle-online/series_summit
Re: And next: commercial positioning
My (very rough) understanding is that they probably will, as all they need is a very accurate clock (to 40ns) and to know where they are. That and the ability to broadcast both of those things. The rest is just maths calculated by the receiver
Re: And next: commercial positioning
I'm not sure that Starlink _is_ compatible with a GNSS application. I think there are three main issues:
-- As I understand it, the individual Starlink spacecraft have some degree of autonomy in order to avoid each other. So a given article may not actually know, precisely, where it is! Maybe it will be good enough, but...
-- I also doubt they have a highly accurate clock, because that adds cost, and as the whole point of the constellation is to maintain low-latency connections, whatever timing information a given spacecraft might need would be amply addressed by an IEEE1588 clock synchronization system.
-- The terrestrial RF links are narrow, with the system working like a cell system handing off "calls" to different access points/satellites and beam-forming used to solve the power problem. This means that the footprint of a beam may be tiny, e.g. a 10km circle.
So a classic GNSS is probably not on the cards. But if a Stalink satellite "knows" enough about a ground-station's location to steer a beam to it, that would presumably make it theoretically possible to get the position of that 10km circle. And successive spacecraft could, over time, improve on that ... but this is all assuming that the system doesn't already depend on GPS to steer the beams to the ground stations (which may or may not be the case, but I wouldn't rule it out!).
What I do think is very plausible is that, if there's a good business case, that there may be a GNSS variant of the Starlink spacecraft. One very specific business case that I know SpaceX has put thought into is... how do you locate yourself on Mars? If the answer to that is a Martian GNSS, an Earth variant is an incremental and useful addition, and Starlink proves they have the technology to launch and manage such a constellation...
And next: commercial positioning
I wouldn't be at all surprised to hear that Elon's Starlink that SpaceX are launching at a rapid rate of knots contains some kind of positioning subsystem. The Chinese have put their 35th Beidou satellite in orbit after 20 years of effort. SpaceX launch 50-60 Starlink birds on each Falcon 9 launch. Even if current Starlink birds don't to positioning, that rate of deployment and tech iteration means they possibly soon could.