Technical staff put on a rocket adaptor to the quantum communication satellite at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in Jiuquan, Gansu Province. (Photo : Getty Images)
The world's first quantum communication satellite was successfully launched in China earlier this week, proving China's leading role in space technology, experts said.
Several scientists from other countries have been working on quantum communication technologies, but with the successful launch of the quantum communication satellite, it has shown that China is the leading proponent in the field, Kubatbek Tekeshov, head of the department of information and communication technology in Kyrgyz State University of Construction, Transport and Architecture, said.
Tekeshov said that new satellite's successful launch also proved that quantum communication is now a reality and not just a theory.
"With the help of quantum we have the opportunity to move particles. Now the scientific community can confidently say that China has made a great leap forward, and opened a new era for all mankind," Tekeshov remarked.
The Xinhua News Agency reported that the satellite "Micius," nicknamed after a Chinese philosopher and scientist in the fifth century B.C, lifted off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in Gansu Province on Tuesday, Aug. 16.
The satellite will undergo three months of in-orbit testing before it will start its "hack-proof" quantum communication through transmission of uncrackable keys from space to ground sites.
The world has focused its attention on China's achievement in terms quantum communication, as the quantum communication satellite will "allow us to see what we can't see before," Kubatbek Talypov, chief of the physics laboratory in Kyrgyzstan's National Academy of Sciences, told Xinhua.
A New York Times report said that Chinese researchers will use the satellite and quantum communications to establish secure transmissions between two sites.
The first major link in China would be between Beijing and Shanghai, and is expected to open this year, according to Xinhua.
Pan Jianwei, the chief scientist of the quantum satellite project, said four ground stations for quantum communication and one station in space for experimental quantum teleportation were built for the project.
