High speed internet, a tool of powerful competition in space racing

High speed internet, a tool of powerful competition in space racing

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By
Prof. Ghada Amer
Deputy of the Faculty of Engineering for Graduate Studies and Research – Banha University
The Amazon company – and before it SpaceX – announced that it will launch thousands of satellites for the space Internet during the coming period, as part of a project called the “Kuiper” project, and Amazon for those who do not know it , is one of the main companies that work with the American Space Force Which Deputy Defense Minister Pat Shanahan talked about it when he announced the American Space Force last August that ” the Pentagon intends to cooperate and benefit from the giant technologies of companies such as Amazon, Microsoft and Blue Orange, and not Amazon, which is part of the implementation of the American Space Force plan. – Only it intends to do this project , there are many countries intending to do so, such as China, which announced last July that it intends to launch 72 satellites for the Internet in the next three years. They will be implemented by the company “Komsat” for the private satellite , which was funded by the Xi’an Institute of Optics and Micro Mechanics as part of the Chinese strategy for national assistance to acquire high-tech. Also, Moscow announced on May 22 that the Russian Space Systems Company (part of the state space company, Ross Cosmos) is planning to implement a project to establish a global satellite communication network that will require 288 satellites by 2025, as an essential part of services for the Russian digital economy, and here are some examples of countries that strongly want to own space internet systems. but why?!

Let me first, before I tell you why the possession of space internet systems is important to the degree of competition between the major countries over their possession, to tell you about the size of the expected space economy, according to many reports, and on top of them is the report of the investment bank “UBS”, the value of the space economy is expected to rise from $ 340 billion – currently – to $ 805 billion by 2030 – driven by a combination of lower costs for orbiting rocket launches, as well as advances in satellite technology – while innovation in areas such as traditional satellites and space and government military applications is expected to grow, according to the report that it is the most important activities that will increase the importance of space economy , it will be, for example : mining, where it can, for example, extract minerals such as gold, silver, titanium and a counterpart known as helium-3 that can be used in nuclear fusion from the moon, and for this reason the Trump administration plans to send astronauts to the moon in 2024, which is the first mission of its kind since 1972, but not only the moon that contains precious metals, as NASA estimates that there are 700 million dollars of gold, iron and nickel in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, and other important activities that will increase of the size of space economies strongly – according to the same report – Space Internet systems (high-speed communication systems).

The importance of owning an Internet through space lies in providing fast internet, especially with the tremendous growth in the use of mobile phone data in recent years, as well as providing about a billion government, economic and personal transactions daily, and most importantly, these communications will be through secure channels. The country that possesses satellite internet systems will be able to implement emergency communications for mobile administrations throughout its complete territory, and to develop services for all government departments and industrial and commercial facilities and will enable them to have high-precision control of modern systems such as drones. The most important thing is the use of space internet to develop communications in defense systems. For example, the air force uses satellite Internet communication to make high-speed decisions to distribute information between land, sea and air forces, and this is done through a high frequency band that is difficult to track. According to Adam Gilmore, CEO of Gilmore Space Technologies, that with the rise of the global space race, more satellites will be launched into orbit by various companies operating in this sector, and this will increase the growth of innovation in areas such as Conventional Satellites and government and military space applications. It is expected that about 16,000 satellites to operate in low Earth orbit to provide Internet access to reach any person around the world. The Internet satellites will be linked to a global network that includes a series of earth stations located around the world. This expected growth in global internet services will have a profound impact on information and communications technology because it will add an estimated 4 billion potential users to the global Internet as clients and users of the Internet, and will bridge the digital gap by providing access to the Internet to areas far from services.

The conclusion I want to reach: The possession of satellite Internet systems for developing countries (such as the Arab countries) provides a promising opportunity for them that they have aggressively sought to possess such systems!

Translated by : mudhaffar al-kusairi

Rawabet Center for Research and Strategic Studies