The facility's owners said China will lose access to a strategic space tracking station in Western Australia when its contract expires, a decision that wipes out Beijing's capabilities in space exploration and navigation in the Pacific region.
Sydney:
The facility's owners said China will lose access to a strategic space tracking station in Western Australia when its contract expires, a decision that wipes out Beijing's capabilities in space exploration and navigation in the Pacific region.
The Swedish Space Corporation (SSC) has secured a contract allowing Beijing access to the satellite antenna at the earth station since at least 2011. It is located next to an SSC satellite station primarily used by the United States and its agencies, including NASA.
The Swedish state-owned company told Reuters that it will not enter into any new contracts at the Australian site to support Chinese customers after its current contract expires. However, she did not disclose when the lease would expire.
"Given the complexity of the Chinese market, caused by the widespread geopolitical situation, the SSC decided to focus in most cases on different markets in the coming years," the committee said in an email response to questions.
The site is owned by SSC's subsidiary, SSC Space Australia.
China's expanding space capabilities, which includes the ever-increasing development of its Beidou navigation network, is one of the new frontiers of tension between the United States and China, which have clashed over everything from technology and trade to Chinese activities in the disputed South China Sea. .
Australia has a strong alliance with the United States, which consists of collective action on space searches and programs, while trade and diplomatic relations between Canberra and Beijing are additionally fractured.
The remaining China used the Yatharaga space station, located about 350 kilometers (250 miles) north of the Australian city of Perth, in June 2013 to assist the three-man Shenzhou 10 mission which had completed a series of docking tests in space, according to the company. SSC.
The Special Security Committee said that the current decade supports China's scientific space missions within the framework of its manned space flight program for remote measurement, tracking and command services.
Expanding abroad
Earth stations are a vital part of space programs because they establish a communications link with spacecraft. While the stations have various capabilities, they can be equipped to coordinate satellites for global civil and military satellite navigation systems (GNSS) such as Beidou, Russia's GLONASS, the European Union's Galileo, and the US-owned GPS system.
The Chinese space program has been increasing its reach to overseas earth stations in recent years, in line with expanding space exploration and navigation programs.
"In general, anywhere you place a GNSS earth station monitoring will improve the positioning accuracy of that area," said John Wayne Cheung, associate senior researcher at the School of Electrical Engineering at the University of New South Wales.
Christopher Newman, professor of space law and policy at Northumbria University in Newcastle, England, said China wants to remove its dependence on the Global Positioning System (GPS) as part of broader plans to expand its global influence.
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