MICIUS: China Launches World’s 1st Quantum Encrypted Communications Satellite

21st Century Wire says…

This story went under the radar this week, but it’s significance should not be underestimated.

It’s official: China has just taken the global lead in information technology and telecommunications. Arguably, the nation who leads this pivotal sector into the 21st century – will lead the world in digital industries and commercial innovation.

The rest of the world will be playing catch-up now…

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RT

Nicknamed ‘Micius’, in honor of the 5th century BC Chinese philosopher and scientist, QUESS will be positioned at sun-synchronous orbit, some 600km (373 miles) above the Earth at an angle of 97.79 degrees, allowing it circle our planet once every 90 minutes.

“The newly-launched satellite marks a transition in China’s role – from a follower in classic information technology (IT) development to one of the leaders guiding future IT achievements,” said Pan Jianwei, chief scientist of QUESS project with the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), as quoted by Xinhua.

The satellite has been tasked with testing out a potentially uncrackable communications system. QUESS will explore quantum teleportation by sending out keys from space to ground command using the principle of ‘quantum entanglement’, an act of fusing two or more particles into complementary ‘quantum states’.

In practice, China hopes to send out photons from the satellite to two ground stations separated by about 1,200km (746 miles), which together form one entangled system. Operated by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the satellite contains a quantum key communicator, a processing unit, a laser communicator, quantum entanglement emitter, and entanglement source to transmit quantum keys to Earth.

Quantum communication encryption is a unique method of encoding the content of a message as quantum keys are theoretically impossible to crack with the system detecting any intrusion attempts. For instance, when two people share an encrypted quantum message, if a third person intercepts it, it will change in an unpredictable way…

Continue this article at RT

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