BDS-3 satnav charts a new future for China
Print Edition
China has declared the official commissioning of the BeiDou Navigation Satellite System, marking the formal opening of the newly completed BDS-3 system for global users.
Chinese President Xi Jinping officially announced the commissioning of BDS-3 on Friday while attending the completion and commissioning ceremony for the newly completed system at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.
It is of great significance to enhancing China’s comprehensive national strength, to promote China’s economic development and improvement of people’s livelihood under regular epidemic prevention and control, to promote China’s opening-up under the current international economic situation, to further enhance national self-confidence, and to strive to achieve the two centenary goals, said Xi.
He said over the past 26 years, all personnel participating in the development and construction of the BDS had overcome difficulties, dared to fight hard battles and worked hard.
They have cultivated a spirit in the new era which should be passed on and carried forward.
Xi called for promoting BDS applications and ensuring good follow-up work, such as the stable operation of the system, to make new and greater contributions to China’s economic and social development as well as the building of a community with a shared future for humanity.
The BDS system is one of China’s major achievements since the reform and opening-up, said Chi Jun, chief director of the BDS-3 satellite research team at the China Academy of Space Technology.
“BDS, an important piece of space infrastructure, serves the productivity and lives of people by providing accurate time-and-space information services,” Chi said.
“My colleagues and I have worked around the clock over the past years, experiencing many ups and downs. We are fully aware of its great significance to national security, economic and social development, as well as to public life,” said Xie Jun, chief designer of the BDS-3 satellite system at CAST.
The BDS system involves efforts of more than 400 agencies and 300,000 research personnel and technicians. The CAST, developer of the satellites, has gathered leading experts and manufacturers from around the country, and integrated the most advanced technologies and high-quality materials and products for the program.
The Xi’an branch of the CAST undertook the development of rubidium atomic clocks.
Dubbed the “heart” of the navigation system, the clocks provide time and frequency standards for BDS satellites, and are key to the system’s positioning, speed measurement and timing accuracy.
In the past two decades, the Xi’an branch has delivered more than 100 rubidium atomic clocks, including 70 high-precision rubidium clocks, to the BDS program.
China started to develop atomic clocks as early as the 1960s and 1970s.
But most of the research then was theoretical and ground-based.
As China decided to build its own satellite navigation system, self-developed rubidium atomic clocks proved to be of great significance to the control of the whole system
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