China builds new type of satellite-destroying weapon
Technology
Jaw-dropping Chinese space weapons with ‘mind-boggling’ capabilities
(Web Desk) - China has injected billions into advancing its homegrown space industry, and now has the second-largest satellite fleet in the world - behind only the US.
But the technology the country is pushing out has spooked defence chiefs in the US, a long-time space-faring nation.
Chinese scientists say they have built a new type of satellite-destroying weapon that converges multiple high-powered microwave beams to take out a single target.
According to a report from South China Morning Post, a pro-China paper, the weapon is a similar concept to the super laser from the Death Star featured in Star Wars.
The space laser has allegedly completed experimental trials on its potential military use.
China has reportedly been developing high-powered microwave (HPM) weapons with the potential to disrupt radar systems, computers, communication infrastructures, and even missiles and satellites.
But each microwave beam needs to be positioned with millimetre-level accuracy to work.
Time synchronisation must also be within 170 picoseconds, or trillionths of a second, which is more precise than the atomic clocks on GPS satellites.
Chinese scientists said the latest technology could suppress signals of American GPS and other satellites, "achieving multiple goals such as teaching and training, new technology verification, and military exercises."
In September, a Space Force intelligence report warned that China's military is rapidly building up space capabilities.
It said that over 970 recently deployed satellites could support attacks on US aircraft carriers, expeditionary forces and air wings during a conflict.
China last year sent the classified Yaogan-41 optical satellite into orbit, an 18.5metre-long hunk of tech believed to have a resolution down to around 2.5metres, according to Forbes.
This suggests it is capable of seeing car-sized objects.
That is the equivalent to seeing a strand of hair from 800meters away, a study from the Chinese Academy of Science reported.
While state media reported that the satellite will be used in land surveys, crop yield estimations, and weather forecasting, onlookers in the US believe it to be designed for military purposes.
