CHINA successfully launched the world’s first quantum satellite yesterday, in a leap for the worldwide effort to develop a communications technology that is impenetrable to hackers.

    In a cloud of smoke, the satellite, Quantum Experiments at Space Scale (QUESS), roared into the dark sky atop a Long March-2D rocket at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the northwestern Gobi Desert at 1:40 a.m.

    The 600-plus-kilogram satellite will circle the earth every 90 minutes once it enters a sun-synchronous orbit at the altitude of 500 kilometers.

    It is nicknamed “Micius,” after a fifth-century-B.C. Chinese philosopher and scientist who has been credited as the first in human history to conduct optical experiments.

    Over its two-year mission, QUESS is designed to establish “hack-proof” quantum communications by transmitting uncrackable keys from space to the ground, and provide insights into the strangest phenomenon in quantum physics — quantum entanglement.

    Quantum communications boasts ultra-high security as a quantum photon can neither be separated nor duplicated. It is hence impossible to wiretap, intercept or crack the information transmitted by it.

    With the help of the new satellite, scientists will be able to test quantum key distribution between the satellite and ground stations, and conduct secure quantum communications between Beijing and Xinjiang’s Urumqi.

    QUESS, as planned, will also beam entangled photons to two earth stations that are 1,200 kilometers apart in an effort to test quantum entanglement over a greater distance than ever before. It will also test quantum teleportation between a ground station in Ali, Tibet, and itself.

    (SD-Xinhua)