Deng Meng, Yang Xin, Qi Xiaojun, reporter Fu Yifei
On July 31, China solemnly announced to the world that China's self-constructed and independently operated global satellite navigation system was fully completed, opening a new chapter in high-quality service to the world and benefiting mankind.
China Beidou has officially stepped onto the world stage, standing in the "first echelon" of my country's active promotion of building a community with a shared future for mankind with practical actions.
Looking back at the present, this "transcript" is hard-won. Since the establishment of the Beidou No. 1 project, 26 years of trials and hardships, several generations of Beidou people have continued to struggle, hundreds of thousands of builders have joined forces, and in the great journey of rejuvenating a powerful country, time and time again refresh the "Chinese speed" and show the "China" "Accuracy", showing "Chinese tolerance", creating brilliant achievements worthy of the party, worthy of the people, worthy of the times.
"Beidou Rhythm" in line with national conditions
In the early 1990s, the international situation was complex and changeable, and people became more and more aware that owning its own satellite navigation system has become an important symbol of a world power and a technological commanding height for power competition.
In 1994, the world's first global satellite navigation system GPS was completed. At this time, China's Beidou No. 1 system has just been approved.
The same is to build a global satellite navigation system. The United States, Russia and the European Union have chosen to "build the world in one step." Someone once suggested that the construction of foreign global navigation systems has already set a good model. Isn’t it simple for us to imitate and copy?
But this is not suitable for China's Beidou development path.
At that time, my country's economic strength and technological foundation were still relatively weak, and it caught up with the strictest foreign technological blockade under the special international background, and internal and external difficulties overlapped. It is a wise choice to first solve the existence, meet the urgent needs, and effectively "use every copper plate on the blade".
As early as 1983, Academician Chen Fangyun, the founder of the "Two Bombs and One Star" and one of the advocates of the "863 Project", creatively proposed the concept of "Double Star Positioning". This scheme can achieve "from nothing" with the smallest constellation, the least investment, and the shortest cycle.
Since then, academician Sun Jiadong, the founding father of the "two bombs and one star" and the first chief designer of the Beidou system, further organized research and proposed a "three-step" development strategy, and decided to build a test system first, then a regional system, and finally a global system.
Since the establishment of the project, the Beidou system construction has insisted on "drawing a blueprint to the end" and has stepped out its own rhythm step by step. The Beidou-1 test system was completed in 2000, making my country the third country in the world with an autonomous satellite navigation system. The Beidou No. 2 regional system was completed in 2012 to provide services for the Asia-Pacific region. The construction of the Beidou-3 global system in 2020 has realized the "global dream" that the Chinese are diligently seeking.
A huge project entrusted by ten thousand people
Beidou is a huge complex space system with the largest scale, the widest coverage, the highest service performance, and the most closely related to people's lives in my country so far.
"Beidou is the result of the party and the state mobilizing thousands of troops, and hundreds of thousands of people across the entire line of the project united and worked together. It was supported by the strong support of the broad masses of people." Yang Changfeng, chief designer of Beidou satellite navigation system engineering Emotion.
Under the leadership of the Party Central Committee, and inspired by the great cause of building a powerful aerospace nation, the builders of the South and the North, with passion and dreams, gathered to the front line of Beidou development and construction.
According to statistics, since the start of the project, more than 400 units and more than 300,000 scientific and technical personnel have been mobilized across the country to participate in the development and construction. Two "two bombs and one star" founders Chen Fangyun and Sun Jiadong and dozens of academicians of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Chinese Academy of Sciences led the campaign.
The number of domestic enterprises and institutions in the field of satellite navigation and location services is about 14,000, and the number of employees exceeds 500,000, forming five major industrial areas in the Pearl River Delta, Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, Yangtze River Delta, Hubei, Henan, and Sichuan, Shaanxi and Chongqing.
The Beidou system consists of seven systems: satellites, rockets, launch sites, measurement and control, operation control, inter-satellite links, and application verification. It is a complex system engineering that crosses departments, disciplines, industries, and regions. Commanding a "thousand army" is inseparable from scientific top-level design and efficient organizational leadership.
"The thought of Qian Xuesen's overall design department runs through the entire process of development and construction, and the establishment of a scientific and complete organization and management system is an important experience for Beidou's success." said Ran Chengqi, director of the China Satellite Navigation System Management Office.
At the top level, relevant state departments jointly set up a leading group and set up a management office, which specifically undertakes the functions of the national satellite navigation authority in charge, and implements centralized management of the Beidou system construction, application industry, and international cooperation. The project team insists on advancing the modernization of the governance system and governance capabilities of major aerospace projects as an important task, continuously optimizing the "two lines" of management and technology, and forming a matrix organization and management model of "horizontal to the side and vertical to the end". In the practice of organization and management, the "two lines" are like the two wings of a bird and the two wheels of a car, supporting each other and advancing at the same frequency.
Behind the emergence of this great power, there are countless ordinary people working hard behind the scenes.
During each launch mission, regardless of day and night, sweltering heat or cold, heavy snowstorms or heavy rains, hundreds of thousands of people in multiple provinces, municipalities, and municipalities in the launch area and rocket wreckage areas consciously obey the overall situation and actively evacuate.
At every important node, tens of thousands of public security officers, guards and employees in the communications, electricity, meteorology, transportation, medical and other industries stick to their posts and jointly build a solid safety guarantee; one group after another group of journalists rushes to the front line of the project , Using the brilliant pen to speak for the Beidou cause; the families of thousands of scientific researchers silently shoulder the burden of caring for their families and support them with a strong backing; and hundreds of millions of people shout for Beidou in various forms Cheer, like and swipe the screen.
The world's first "unique skill"
Compared with other global satellite navigation systems adopting a single-orbit constellation configuration, the Beidou system is unique and firmly chose the characteristic development path of a hybrid constellation.
Beidou-1 realized the first time in the world that geostationary satellites provide navigation and positioning services. On this basis, the Beidou-2 system is the first in the world to create a hybrid constellation with geostationary orbit and tilted geosynchronous orbit satellites as the backbone and medium circular orbit satellites.
Li Zuhong, senior consultant of Beidou system and former deputy chief designer of engineering, said that for regional satellite navigation systems, this "mix and match" combination can achieve the best coverage effect with the least number of satellites.
The Beidou-3 system further develops the "hybrid constellation configuration" and builds a global system consisting of 24 medium-circular orbit satellites, 3 geostationary orbit satellites, and 3 tilted geostationary orbit satellites, providing a global satellite navigation system. A new paradigm.
As a latecomer to the global satellite navigation system, Beidou has its own "unique skills" in addition to its solid "basic skills".
For example, its short message communication function has created a unique service mode integrating communication and navigation.
Other satellite navigation systems can only passively locate, so users can only know "where am I". And Beidou users not only know "where am I", but also tell others "where am I" and "what am I doing". Yang Changfeng introduced that, for example, in the event of sudden earthquakes and maritime distress, when other communication methods fail, Beidou short message communication can be the last insurance line for transmitting distress messages and saving lives.
Today, Beidou-3 has become the world's first global satellite navigation system that integrates multiple functions. On the basis of full compatibility with Beidou No. 2 system short message communication services, the regional short message sending capacity has been increased from 120 Chinese characters to 1,000 Chinese characters, the number of users supported has increased from 500,000 to 12 million, and the global short message of 40 Chinese characters can be realized. Message communication. In addition, the Beidou-3 system can also provide diversified services such as satellite-based enhancement, international search and rescue, precise single-point positioning, and ground-based enhancement, which can better meet the diverse needs of users.