The BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS) is a Chinese satellite navigation system, and which is also the third mature satellite navigation system after GPS and GLONASS. The BDS is composed of three parts: space segment, ground segment and user segment. It can provide high-precision, high-reliability positioning, navigation, and timing services for all kinds of users around the world, all-weather and all-day, and it has short message communication. Capabilities, with preliminary regional navigation, positioning, and timing capabilities. The positioning accuracy is decimeter and centimeter level, the speed measurement accuracy is 0.2 m/s, and the timing accuracy is 10 nanoseconds.
It consists of two separate satellite constellations. The first system, officially called the BeiDou Satellite Navigation Experimental System and also known as BeiDou-1, consisted of three satellites which, beginning in 2000, offered limited coverage and navigation services, mainly for users in China and neighboring regions. BeiDou-1 was decommissioned at the end of 2012. On 23 June 2020, the final BeiDou satellite was successfully launched, the launch of the 55th satellite in the Beidou family. The third iteration of the BDS promises to provide global coverage for timing and navigation, offering an alternative to Russia’s GLONASS, the European Galileo positioning system, and America’s GPS.
The second generation of the system, officially called the BDS and also known as COMPASS or BeiDou-2, became operational in China in December 2011 with a partial constellation of 10 satellites in orbit. Since December 2012, it has been offering services to customers in the Asia-Pacific region.
In 2015, China launched the third generation system (BeiDou-3) for global coverage. The first BDS-3 satellite was launched on 30 March 2015. On 27 December 2018, BDS started providing global services. The 35th and the final satellite of BDS-3 was launched into orbit on 23 June 2020.It was said in 2016 that BeiDou-3 will reach millimeter-level accuracy (with post-processing).
According to China Daily, in 2015, fifteen years after the satellite system was launched, it was generating a turnover of $31.5 billion per annum.
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