China's home-grown global navigation satellite system, Compass, will provide regional service in 2011 with a constellation of 12 satellites, said an industry insider.

China aims to make Compass a navigation satellite system of 35 satellites by 2020, which can offer global service, Hu Gang, vice-president of Beijing BD Star Navigation Co Ltd, was quoted by Friday's China Daily as saying.

Compass, or Beidou (Big Dipper) in Chinese, is expected to rival the US-developed GPS, the EU's GPS and Russia's Global Navigation Satellite System, earlier reports said.


China's Compass-G2 navigation satellite is launched on a Long March-3C carrier rocket at the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in southwest China's Sichuan Province, April 15, 2009. (Xinhua/Li Gang)
Officials representing the four systems are now in negotiations to make their civilian-use technologies compatible, Hu said at a two-day national geological information industry summit that ended Thursday.

"This could possibly allow a civilian user of global navigation satellite system to have access to more than 120 navigation satellites in the future, which will assure stability and improve accuracy," he said.

The 12 satellites will be part of the program's first phase. But so far only two Compass satellites have been launched into orbit, one in 2007 and the other in April this year, he said.

Source:Xinhua