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China and Russia to boost satellite navigation systems with new ground stations
- BeiDou to install stations in three Russian cities while GLONASS will build sites in Urumqi, Shanghai and Changchun
- The agreement aims to improve accuracy and reliability of the systems, which compete with US-owned GPS
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China and Russia have agreed to build satellite ground stations on each other’s soil to improve how their global navigation systems work together, according to Russian space agency Roscosmos.
The agreement aimed to make Russia’s GLONASS and China’s BeiDou systems more reliable and accurate, the Russian agency said in a statement on Tuesday.
Under contracts China and Russia signed at a regular meeting on satellite navigation, GLONASS stations will be installed in three Chinese cities: Changchun in the northeast, Urumqi in the northwest and Shanghai in the east.
BeiDou stations will be built in Obninsk in western Russia, Irkutsk in eastern Siberia and Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky in the Russian Far East.
“The simultaneous use of Russian and Chinese systems – GLONASS and BeiDou – will improve the accuracy and reliability of navigation,” Roscosmos chief Yury Borisov said.
“This is why we are sincerely interested in expanding cooperation on the use of GLONASS and BeiDou systems, as well as navigation technologies based on them.”
The statement on the meeting released by BeiDou’s operators did not mention the details of the agreement.
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