HONG KONG/BEIJING ¨C China is taking its rivalry with the U.S. to the heavens, spending at least $9 billion to build a celestial navigation system and cut its dependence on the American-owned GPS amid heightening tensions between the two countries.
Location data beamed from GPS satellites are used by smartphones, car navigation systems, the microchip in your dog¡¯s neck and guided missiles ¡ª and all those satellites are controlled by the U.S. Air Force. That makes the Chinese government uncomfortable, so it¡¯s developing an alternative that a U.S. security analyst calls one of the largest space programs the country has undertaken.
¡°They don¡¯t want to depend on the U.S.¡¯s GPS,¡± said Marshall Kaplan, a professor in the aerospace engineering department at the University of Maryland. ¡°The Chinese don¡¯t want to be subject to something that we can shut off.¡±
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