China Launches the Largest Number of Advanced Satellites a Year

Picture of the positioning operation of Beidou satellites

China launched 20 and 19 satellites respectively in 2012 and 2013, ranking the first in the world. China has been providing satellite launch services in the world but due to political, legal and financial barriers and hindrance related to intellectual property protection, it now has only 3% market share in world satellite launch market.

It plans to raise its market share to 15% by 2020 and has therefore established China International Satellite Services Association consisting of major customers of Chinese satellite operators, equipment manufacturers and space services providers in order to remove those obstacles.

However, since the market share is small, most of the satellites China launched belonged to China; therefore, we have the safe conclusion that in 2012 and 2013, Chinese satellites ranked the first in number in all the satellites launched in the world in 2012 and 2013.

The US perhaps has the largest number of operating satellites in space now, but lots of them are old. The Chinese satellites launched in 2012 and 2013 are the newest. They not only rank number one in number, but their quality shall not be underestimateed. I said in my post “China’s Beidou Satellite Positioning System Better than US GPS” on May 14 that China’s Beidou satellite global positioning system is better than US GPS.

In my post I said:

It (Beidou) cannot provide global coverage because only 16 of its planned 35 satellites have been launched. However, the services provided in the limited area prove that it is superior to US GPS.

First, it has better accuracy, Its civil services has similar accuracy to GPS, but the positioning accuracy of its exclusive military service for China and Pakistan is said to be 10 centimeters.

The US GPS has only 32 satellites all in medium earth orbits with no geostationary ones. China’s BDS (Beidou Navigation Satellite System) has 35 satellites, 5 of which in geostationary orbits, 27 in medium earth orbits and 3 in inclined geosynchronous orbit. No wonder BDS has better accuracy.

(Note: Only 16 satellites had been launched by 2012. The rest of the 35 satellites will all have been launched by 2020)

There has been the plan to increase the number of satellites to more than 75. In that case, BDS will be far superior than GPS.

Second, BDS provides message services so that one user can send its position and status to another.

Third, it can better resist interference. GPS is vulnerable to interference as proved by Iran’s capture of a US reconnaissance drone.

Due to its superiority, when all the 35 satellites have been put into orbits, BDS will provide global services better than GPS. It is expected that by the time BDS provides normal global services, it will grab from the U.S. a market share of 80% in China and 20% in the world. That means a great increase in Chinese and decrease in US government’s income from global positioning services.

Source: Chan Kai Yee’s post on May 14 “China’s Beidou Satellite Positioning System Better than US GPS”

Source: qianzhan.com “PLA has additional attack weapon again: Russia media says China has the largest number of satellites in the world” (summary by Chan Kai Yee based on the report in Chinese)

Related posts:

• China’s Beidou Satellite Positioning System Better than US GPS dated May 14, 2014
• Top Secret: China Developing Second Generation of Beidou Missile Guiding System dated November 17, 2013
• Beidou launches navigation data for Asia-Pacific region dated December 28, 2012
• China’s Beidou GPS as Accurate as US GPS system dated December 1, 2012