China and Russia agree to build new GLONASS and BeiDou ground navigation stations to improve accuracy and reliability
China and Russia have agreed to build new satellite ground stations on each other’s territory, according to the Russian space agency Roscosmos. This should make the Russian and Chinese satellite navigation systems, respectively GLONASS and BeiDou, more reliable and accurate.
In accordance with the contracts that China and Russia concluded at a joint meeting on satellite navigation, GLONASS stations are installed in three Chinese cities: China in the northwest, Urumqi in the northwest and Shanghai in production. BeiDou stations will be connected in Obninsk in Western Russia, Irkutsk in Eastern Siberia and Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky in the Russian Far East.
“The use of Russian and Chinese systems – GLONASS and BeiDou – will increase the reliability and reliability of navigation, – said the head of Roscosmos Yuri Borisov. — Therefore, we are sincerely interested in expanding cooperation in the use of our satellite systems, as well as navigation technologies based on them.“.
Russian and Chinese systems appeared later than GPS in America. China launched the BeiDou program in the 1990s based on fears that the Chinese army would be vulnerable without its own satellite navigation system, since the GPS system previously used by the Chinese military is owned by the US government and operated by the US Air Force and Space Force. In order to expand the scope of BeiDou, China is actively promoting it through its One Belt, One Road initiative to counteract the development of global trade by releasing products with chips that support this navigation system. BeiDou only achieved global coverage in 2020, when the planet’s maximum altitude was reached in orbit.
In turn, the GLONASS system was launched in 1982 for the operational navigation and time use of a large number of users on land, in water and in the pool. Later, the system went through more than one upgrade. As a result, global coverage was restored in 2010. Now the main systems are 24 satellites. Most modern mobile platforms, and therefore smartphones, are often found with GLONASS satellites.
Tuesday’s meeting was not the first time GLONASS and BeiDou have signed an agreement to expand system capabilities and performance capabilities. Earlier this year, Moscow and Beijing agreed that the systems would complement each other in ways of measuring time, allowing users to accurately tell time without atomic clocks. In 2018, Russia and China pledged to regulate the development of BeiDou and GLONASS for global purposes. Roscosmos has established a monitoring station in Brazil, South Australia, Nicaragua and Antarctica to improve coverage in the southern hemisphere.
BeiDou and GLONASS are working in tandem to improve coverage and assembly speeds in Russia and China.
If you notice an error, select it with the mouse and press CTRL + ENTER.