The Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) has often been referred to as "China's Technology Team". According to the country's future satellite telecommunication technology needs, CAS is eyeing the modern microsatellite and is setting up the Shanghai Engineering Center for Microsatellite and that a microsatellite unified central laboratory.

The Microsatellite Engineering Center and the unified central laboratory are set up within the Shanghai Institute of Microsystem and Information Technology. Its business director Yang Longgen revealed that following the successful manufacture and launch of Chuangxin I, the Center has been moving ahead on the research work on the second "Chuangxin I" and all has been going well.

Yang said that the Chuangxin I launched in October of 2003 was China's first successfully launched and orbited under-100 kilo modern microsatellite. It possessed extremely refined communication capabilities and its technology reached the advanced international standards of its peers. That satellite has exceeded its mission duration by seven months and is still running fine and is estimated to be able to continue operation for another year.

The second "Chuangxin I" that is being researched and produced will exceed its predecessor in capability by a large magnitude. It will push forward the establishment of a microsatellite research platform and enable China's modern microsatellites to move from the technical testing stage to the practical implementation stage.

(Chinanews May 20, 2005)