China considers launching 50 satellites to set up global monitoring network

KUALA LUMPUR — Frustrated over the failure to locate the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, Beijing is considering setting up a global monitoring network, the South China Morning Post reported yesterday.

The Hong Kong daily reported that Beijing was mulling over building more than 50 orbiting probes so it could monitor the entire planet.

Chinese researchers said this would put it on par with or exceed the United States in terms of having a network of surveillance and observation satellites.

Flight MH370 went missing on March 8 with 153 Chinese nationals on board and has not been found despite 22 days of search operations.

Professor Chi Tianhe, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Remote Sensing and Digital Earth, told the newspaper that if China had a global monitoring network today, the 26 nations involved in the search would not be doing so in the dark. “We would have a much greater chance of finding MH370 and tracing it to its final position,” he said.

“The plan is being drafted to expand our regional monitoring capability to global coverage.”

The number of Chinese surveillance and observation satellites is a state secret, but Prof Chi estimated that the US operated about 50 similar satellites, the report said.

It said a satellite costs about 400 million yuan (S$81 million) to build, based on estimates from experts in the mainland’s space industry.

Prof Liu Yu, a remote-sensing expert at Peking University’s School of Earth and Space Sciences, told the newspaper the project would be a game changer for China if approved by Beijing. “China’s ability to carry out observation from space would be altered tremendously,” he said, adding that current international earth-observation services are dominated by the US and Europe.

“The more Chinese satellites there are in space, the easier our work becomes. By analysing data from numerous satellites positioned at different locations and equipped with different sensors, we can understand much better an area of interest,” he said.

However, the ambitious plan is likely to rattle some of China’s neighbours locked in territorial disputes with Beijing. Agencies