Frustrated over the missing Malaysia Airlines aircraft’s unsuccessful search mission currently underway for over three weeks now, China said it is planning to set up a global monitoring network at a massive scale.
According to a report on South China Morning Post, the Chinese government is considering to set up more than 50 observation satellites in the orbit to monitor the entire planet.
The report said that the move was fuelled by failure to locate Flight MH370, which went missing on March 8 with 153 Chinese nationals on board, even after 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 paper that “If we had a global monitoring network today, we wouldn’t be searching in the dark. We would have a much greater chance to find the plane and trace it to its final position.”
“The plan is being drafted to expand our regional monitoring capability to global coverage.”
According to statistics from the US-based Union of Concerned Scientists, most of the satellites which are currently in orbit above the planet are only for communications. Only around 150 out of 1000 satellites are for observation, remote-sensing and spying.
Chinese researchers claims that if the government approves the latest satellite proposal, which is estimated to cost about 20 billion yuan (£2 billion), then it will put the country’s satellite surveillance network on par with the United States or even greater than it.
