text | AI Finance and Economics Niugeng
Editor | Zhang Ze
Xu Ying heard a saying: The GPS in the United States is genuine, Glonass in Russia is high imitation, Galileo in Europe is low imitation, and Beidou in China is It is Taobao's "Nine Dollars and Nine Free Shipping" products. If
is now many years later, she will definitely be angry to argue on the spot. But at that time, she hadn't gotten acquainted with Beidou, she was just a "plain" genius girl: she was admitted to university at the age of 16, and she was admitted to a university at the age of 23. She was always a bit higher than others in the exam, waiting to choose the direction of life.
In 2016, Xu Ying has become the youngest doctoral supervisor of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. But she still couldn't let go of that sentence. She took off her white lab robe, put on formal attire, with headphones on her neckline, and boarded an internal forum of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. This speech made her famous in one fell swoop and became the "Goddess of the Big Dipper" in the eyes of everyone. "People's Daily" also praised that "science needs more Xu Ying". Someone at
told her, "You should focus more on scientific research." But Xu Ying retorted, "But if everyone does not popularize science, who can inherit and carry forward the things you have researched?" So far , She is still in the spare time of scientific research, rushing to every popular science forum to tell everyone the unknown legend of Beidou.
If there is a Big Dipper in the sky, there will be no lost
In 1957, the Soviet Union launched its first artificial satellite, and the “Let's Conquer Space” posters were all over the buildings. The following year, NASA was established, and the two countries started a nationwide satellite launch competition.
The Americans soon discovered that satellites can locate ground targets from the sky, and the global satellite navigation system has taken shape. By 1994, when China wanted to launch a navigation satellite, the inch of gold in the orbit of space was filled with the "flags" of the United States and Russia.
As the space orbit is "first-occupied, first-served", China has decided to join the EU's "Galileo" plan to seize orbit and frequency resources together. China paid 70 million euros, equivalent to a thousand houses in Beijing that year. Europeans laughed and said: China loves Galileo more than itself.
But the weather is unpredictable. The EU suddenly changed its mind and planned to kick China out of the Galileo project. This means that China will lose the frequency and track of application, and will always have to borrow the "eyes" of other countries. China has decided to develop its own satellite system and launch the satellite before April 2007.
This year, Xu Ying is in the second year of graduate school. Her mentor took the next project and participated in the design of Beidou receivers, and Xu Ying also became attached to Beidou.
April 14, 2007, became the first "decisive moment" of Beidou in Xu Ying's memory. As the applied frequency and orbit will expire in 3 days, Chinese leaders decided to launch the satellite ahead of schedule. "Usually the launch is delayed, not advanced." In the early morning of the launch of
, there were still 3 minutes before the ignition. The staff found that a gas supply connector could not be detached, which may cause an extinction to the launch site. The commander issued seven instructions within one minute and finally launched the first Beidou satellite into the sky.
But the orbit is not yet complete, and satellite signals have to be received. On April 17, four hours before the frequency failure, more than 10 R&D units gathered in the playground, and the receivers were lined up, waiting for the light spot on the screen. Suddenly, a bright light flashed across the screen, and the entire playground jumped up and hugged each other. "Frequency has been preserved." The Beidou No.1 recalled by
Xu Ying in Tencent News' "Eye Realm Talk" is still a relatively primitive system in Beidou. As a dual-star system, Beidou-1 uses active positioning. In other words, the user needs to send a positioning request to the satellite, and the satellite will respond to the request to achieve navigation and positioning. This has two disadvantages: one is that the user's location may be exposed, and the other is that the user capacity is limited, and the satellite cannot respond to many users at the same time.
In order to solve the risk of limited user capacity, the R&D team developed the Beidou-2. The Beidou-2 satellite transmits signals in the form of broadcast, and there is no need for users to send requests. It became a regional system covering China and the surrounding Asia-Pacific region. There was also an episode during the launch of
Beidou-2. On that day, when the ninth satellite was launched, it was a thunderstorm and the satellite needed to be launched later. But Beidou is not a single satellite, but a networked constellation. As Xu Ying explained, it is not enough to launch a satellite into a specific orbit. It must be in a specific position in the orbit. If this one is launched late, it may drag Beidou's progress for months or even a year. LuckyFortunately, the satellite finally lifted off in a thunderstorm.
waited until the Beidou-3, launching "multiple stars with one arrow" was no longer difficult for China. In July 2020, the Beidou Phase III network was completed, and the last piece of the puzzle of global navigation was put together.
As for many people asking why China Beidou adopts No. 1, No. 2, and No. 3 construction plans, instead of one step, Xu Ying also gave the answer in "Eye Realm Talk"—Beidou actually has a project called "Three The principle of step-by-step construction is based on the development trend of my country's economic and technological strength. The first Beidou double-star system, the Beidou-1 system, solved the problem of my country’s satellite navigation and positioning system, making my country the third country in the world with a satellite navigation system; on this basis, research and development The team made further technical improvements, from an active system to a passive system, from a regional system to a global system, until the successful launch of Beidou-3 this year, completing the last step of Beidou's three steps.
Beidou has since become a global system that can cover every corner of the world.
Going to the world, Beidou’s next stop "ambition"
This year, Apple’s annual flagship mobile phone iPhone 12 began to support Beidou navigation, which has also become an important node of Beidou navigation system after the global network. In fact, before the construction of Beidou-3, because Beidou was still a regional system, even if the iPhone 12 supports Beidou, it would not receive a signal in the United States, which greatly restricted the development of Beidou. Now, with the success of the Beidou No. 3 network, Beidou has also taken a key step in global industrialization. From then on, Beidou equipment and chips can be sold worldwide.
Now, Beidou, together with the US GPS, EU Galileo and Russian GLONASS, are ranked as the world's four major satellite positioning and navigation systems. The Chinese can finally use their own satellite navigation systems. So what are the advantages of Beidou compared to other systems?
Xu Ying said that Beidou’s biggest "exclusive secret" is the short message function: it is not only a navigation system, but also a communication system that can send and receive text messages via satellite. This is due to the construction path of Beidou: Because Beidou 1 is active in positioning, it has the potential for interaction, and Beidou 2 and 3 have been inherited. However, systems in other countries initially adopted the form of broadcasting without considering communication functions.
Regarding the benefits of short message communication, Xu Ying has an analogy: "Suppose a person drifts on an isolated island. If he chooses GPS, he can only know where he is and cannot notify others to rescue. If you use Beidou , He can not only know where he is, but also send the location to a radius of tens, hundreds or even thousands of kilometers away."
"Trust me, if you choose the Beidou positioning system, you will soon be able to communicate on the rescue ship. Say goodbye to your little friend with GPS." With the speed and capacity of Beidou-3, short messages have been widely used in earthquake relief, fishery and forestry. In addition to unique skills such as short message communication, Beidou system also shines in the industry and civilian fields.
When you see that there will be a thunderstorm at noon from the smart bracelet, or use your mobile phone to check the nearby Sichuan restaurant, the Beidou system may already be serving you. In 2016, the world's first accelerated assisted positioning system supporting the Beidou system was launched, covering more than 200 countries and regions, with 200 million daily services. As mainstream domestic and foreign manufacturers such as Huawei, Samsung, and ARM begin to produce chips compatible with the Beidou system, their share in the consumer electronics field will continue to increase. Such quiet services as
also exist in the field of logistics and passenger transportation. By accessing the Beidou system for real-time scheduling, we can match taxis faster in rainy nights, and can also view online shopping packages in real time. Place". Take Beijing as an example. As of 2016, 33500 taxis and 21,000 buses have been equipped with the Beidou system, and 1,500 logistics trucks and 19,000 delivery personnel have used Beidou terminals to access the cloud platform. The
Beidou satellite can also be used for weather forecasting. Because the Beidou signal passes through the atmosphere, an inversion of the signal can be used to infer the current ionospheric state and wait to predict heavy rains and typhoons.
Although the Beidou system after the global network is flexing its muscles, it is for many of us, It is still a technical "black box"-people use it, rely on it, but don't understand it. In many cases, we cannot even feel the existence of the Beidou system.
This phenomenon stems from the positioning of the Beidou system as a "space-time information service provider". As the most basic provider of temporal and spatial information, it does not directly interact with users, but provides services for industries such as electricity, communications, hydrology, and meteorology. As Xu Ying said, "Beidou system exists more like water and air in our lives." 70% of the classmates would write: "I will be a scientist when I grow up," Xu Ying also wrote. Years later, the classmates in her class went their separate ways, but Xu Ying became the youngest doctoral tutor of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and still maintained her curiosity. What worries Xu Ying is that young people's yearning for the scientific world seems to be gradually disappearing today. Now children rarely write sentences like "My ideal is to be a scientist" in their composition. They all want to be stars and idols. In 20 or 30 years, "we may not be able to recruit students."
Xu Ying feels that there is a generation gap between herself and young people, just as there is a generation gap between herself and her parents, Xu Ying found that the communication between herself and the children born in the 90s and 00s is not smooth. In the "Eye Realm Talk" program, Xu Ying mentioned that if she could ask a question to young people today, she would especially like to know what young people think, and what their outlook on life and world looks like. What? What are they interested in in science, or what are they interested in in the world? When
was enrolling at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, a female student came to attend a graduate interview. Although the girl didn't know much about satellite navigation, one of her problems made Xu Ying decide to keep her. "I just want to know why the satellite hangs in the sky and doesn't fall down? I think this is a particularly cool thing." In her, Xu Ying saw curiosity about the unknown world, which is the basic quality of becoming a scientist.
In November 2020, Xu Ying brought this encouragement to young people's curiosity to another stage. As one of the "Horizon Month" series of activities initiated by Tencent News, each issue of "Eye Vision Talk" will select a question raised by a Tencent News netizen, and invite big guys from different industries like Xu Ying to answer and share technology, Knowledge in economic, cultural, psychological and other fields.
These knowledges cannot be transformed into material wealth in fast-paced urban life, but they contain the quality Xu Ying values most-curiosity. They are like the questions that the graduate student asked when facing Xu Ying. They are easy in the eyes of industry experts, but to ordinary people, they are like a torch, lighting their way to explore unknown fields.
This article was originally produced by AI Finance and Economics, the account of "Finance World" Weekly. Please do not reprint it on any channel or platform without permission. Offenders must be investigated.
