China’s Nimble Beijing-3 Artificial Satellite Scans San Francisco Bay Area in Just Seconds

While obtaining photographs of San Francisco, Chinese researchers said they utilized the country's Beijing-3 satellite to execute a "unique experiment."

While most Earth observation satellites must maintain perfect stability when taking pictures, the "world's nimblest imaging satellite "did an in-depth scan of the city's core area in only 42 seconds on June 16, 2021, CCTV (via South China Morning Post [SCMP]) said. Because attitude control devices emit vibrations that blur photos, most imaging satellites must maintain absolute stability when collecting pictures.

Nimble Chinese Satellite Captures Hi-Res Photos of San Francisco in Seconds

The spacecraft scanned a large region around San Francisco Bay in great detail during testing, spanning 3,800 square kilometers (1,470 square miles) in just 42 seconds, project experts told SCMP.

From its 500-kilometer height, the satellite can collect photographs with 50 centimeters per pixel resolution. "The level of our technology has reached a world leading position," experts said per RT.

In June, the Chinese satellite was put to the test by scanning a core section of San Francisco Bay in "an in-depth scan."

The scientists at DFH Satellite Company, part of the Chinese Academy of Space Technology, claimed that it acquired photographs totaling 1,467 square miles in 42 seconds.

They stated that the photographs are "crisp enough to identify a military vehicle on the street and discern what sort of weapon it may be carrying" because they are 19.6 inches per pixel.

The satellite's research team believes it is the most agile spacecraft created. The satellite's capacity to cover such large regions in such a short amount of time is due to onboard artificial intelligence (AI), which aids in its stabilization. The Beijing-3 is reported to be capable of planning its flight path and monitoring up to 500 points of interest as it circles the globe approximately 100 times in a single day.

Because they can only shoot a short strip of land directly below them, most existing satellites must stay stationary while taking photographs of the planet's surface and travel over a region multiple times. The satellite's "nimbleness" has allowed it to do specific previously thought-to-be-impossible tasks, such as recording the 3,915-mile Yangtze River between the Tibetan plateau and the East China Sea in only one journey from north to south over China, according to project lead scientist Yang Fang.

"China started relatively late on agile satellite technology but achieved a large number of breakthroughs in a short [time]," Yang said per The Telegraph.

About Beijing-3 Camera

The AI-enabled satellite, per Republic World, could pick its flight path on its own, monitoring up to 500 points of interest across the world with roughly 100 trips every day. The satellite can also recognize and relay images of particular targets to ground control. According to the research, the reaction time of Beijing-3 is 2-3 times faster than that of WorldView-4, one of the most powerful Earth observation satellites built by the US utilizing comparable technology. Furthermore, Beijing-3's scanning band is 77% broader than WorldView-4's while weighing half as much.

The difficulty with satellite imaging has been that the camera must remain relatively still while the spacecraft spins, as vibrations might blur the images.

The satellite's abrupt revolution, on the other hand, shifted the angle of its camera's line of sight to the earth, allowing it to capture a broader region than previously possible while maintaining a crisp image. China has invested billions in creating an ambitious space program in recent years.

For the first time this year, it launched its space station and landed a rover on Mars. By 2036, Beijing hopes to have astronauts on the Moon. It has also tested a variety of hypersonic aircraft, which are more challenging to detect and counter if they are armed.

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