China Sets Up Own GPS Rival

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China flicked the on switch on its new Beidou Global Positioning Satellite system, a home grown series of satellites that has been launched into space since 2003. China started working on the development of Beidou in the early 2000′s and currently consists of 10 satellites which are able to cover China only for now, but will eventually cover Asia with 16 satellites and the world with 35 by 2020.

Originally China was a partner to the European rival to America’s GPS System, Galileo but perhaps China found development a little too slow and went ahead with its own system. At the time Beidou was only going to be for military use whilst commercial users would get the choice of either Galileo or GPS, however China went ahead and opened Beidou for military and commercial use.

Accurately knowing your position on the earth is an essential tool for military and commercial users, by cutting out the American GPS system the Chinese military will be able to rely on their own system as the American armed forces have the ability to switch off their GPS in certain areas. Although Beidou is limited to China and outlying areas, the Chinese military will be able to move anywhere in Asia unhindered by a lack of GPS signal. The American GPS system has an accuracy of 20meters according to Wikipedia, whilst the Chinese Beidou system offers accuracy to 10 meters for free and commercial variants will offer a much higher accuracy.