Beidou-3

Description: The Beidou is a constellation of navigation satellites developed by China to compete with the United States GPS, Russia's Glonass and Europe's Galileo global positioning systems. The first Beidou satellite was put into orbit in 2009 and almost 35 satellites are expected to follow by 2020 when the system should be fully operational providing coverage worldwide. These spacecrafts are lifted up by a Long March 3III space launch rocket. Some experimental satellites were placed into orbit beginning in 2000. The third Beidou satellite was launched on January 17, 2010, providing navigation services within China and neighboring region with the aim to extend the reach into Asia-Pacific region by 2012.

The Beidou-3 is an extensively upgraded navigation satellite introduced in the 2015-2017 timeframe as replacement for the Beidou-2 satellites. The Beidou-3 can send signals that are compatible with other satellite navigation systems as well as support search and rescue missions following international standards. The Beidou-3 satellite constellation will provide a positioning accuracy between 2.5 and 5 meters.