Published on Thursday, 13 March 2014
BEIJING:
Beijing was unusually open in revealing its satellite capabilities when
it released photographs of possible debris from a missing airplane,
despite taking four days to make the images public, analysts said today.
AFP
China’s State Administration for
Science, Technology and Industry for National Defence (SASTIND)
published three pictures late yesterday of what it said were suspected
large floating objects in the South China Sea.
The images were taken on Sunday, it
said, raising questions as to why it took several days for them to
emerge, and whether—and if so, when—they had been passed to the
Malaysian authorities co-ordinating the search.
China’s space programme is military-run and normally be shrouded in secrecy.
Malaysian and Vietnamese flights in the area of the photographs failed to spot anything, officials said.
But Morris Jones, an independent space
analyst based in Australia, said Beijing’s disclosure of the pictures
was surprisingly open.
“Satellite imagery is a strategic tool
that has military applications, and nations are usually very cautious in
revealing how much these satellites can do and how much they can see,”
he told AFP.
“I am surprised that the Chinese have openly released this image because we don’t normally see images of this quality.”
According to SASTIND, the objects were approximately 13 by 18 metres, 14 by 19 metres and 24 by 22 metres in size.
The actual images “were probably of a
much higher quality than the images they released to the media”, Jones
said. Authorities released them “to provide enough information to show
something, but the image is degraded to hide the true capabilities of
the actual satellite.”
While China’s abilities in space remain
decades behind the US, it has made rapid technological leaps and aims to
launch an independent space station by 2020, eventually sending a man
to the moon.
It has deployed 10 satellites in the search for MH370, Premier Li Keqiang said today.
The image data was obtained by the China
Centre for Resources Satellite Data and Application (CRESDA), an agency
jointly overseen by SASTIND and China’s National Development and Reform
Commission (NDRC).
Among the agency’s goals is the creation
of a national-level satellite data centre to provide high-resolution
images for national defence as well as civilian purposes such as
agriculture and disaster planning.
It started surveying the area after
hearing of the disappearance on Saturday, it said in a statement, and by
Tuesday morning, the satellites had gathered data covering a total of
120,000 square kilometres—an area almost the size of Greece.
“The quality of the data images is rather good,” it said.
An official with CRESDA told AFP today
that the agency was still analysing the images but that no conclusions
had been reached yet.
Jones said he did not find “anything suspicious at all” in the delay in releasing the pictures.
“There’s a lot of time you go through between the time you get the images and the time you release them,” he said.
“The satellite has to get into position,
take the photo, then relay it to a ground station, then it has to be
analysed. And keep in mind, the analysts on the ground are probably
looking through a tremendous amount of data. So I would say there’s
absolutely nothing abnormal.”
One of Beijing’s milestones in satellite
technology came in late 2012, when it announced that it had launched a
domestic satellite navigation network to rival the US GPS global
positioning system.
The Beidou system—named after the
Chinese term for the plough or Big Dipper constellation—currently has 16
satellites, a number expected to grow to 30 by 2020, when the system is
slated to reach global coverage.
China is investing more than 400 billion
yuan (RM213 billion) in the system, which is expected to “benefit both
the military and civilians”, according to Chinese state media.
AFP
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