The GPS has a new competitor of weight: the China was finalized Tuesday, with the launch of a latest satellite, its navigation system, Beidou. It is a real achievement for Beijing, which allows him to cover the entire world and eliminate technologically with the american GPS. In commercial service overseas since 2012, chinese technology was initially limited to the Asia-Pacific region. With the completion of this constellation, the whole planet is now covered.
This thirtieth and final satellite of the third generation Beidou (Beidou-3) has been propelled into space at 09: 43 am local (03h hours, 43) in Paris since the centre’s launch from Xichang, in south-west China, by a rocket Long-March 3, said the public television CCTV. The event was due to take place last week but was postponed at the last moment due to a “technical problem” is not specified.
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The navigation system is chinese, which takes its name from the constellation “Great bear” in mandarin, is cohabiting with others at a global level: GPS (property of the u.s. government and operated by the air force), Galileo (european Union) and Glonass (Russia). Their applications are multiple: guidance for pedestrians, automobiles, boats, cargo ships, first responders during natural disasters, sending messages, positioning service to the mining industry or the agriculture…
Strategic, they can also be used by the armies of their respective countries (China, Usa, Russia) in order to perform the localization or guidance of missiles of very high precision. With Beidou-3, the chinese army is thus protected from a possible cutoff of GPS to be decided by Washington in the event of a hypothetical conflict between the two powers.
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The first satellite Beidou had been launched in 2000. Its services are now employed in China in taxis, buses, cars and, of course, by smartphones. Dozens of countries also use the official system, according to State media the chinese.
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