IANS | 23 May, 2024
South Korea's Ministry of Science and ICT on Thursday said its project
to develop a low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite communications system has passed a
preliminary feasibility study and will officially begin next year.
The science ministry said that the 320 billion won ($234.3 million) LEO
project, also known as South Korea's Starlink, aims to launch two LEO
satellites based on the sixth-generation (6G) communications network technology
by 2030, Yonhap news agency reported.
The ministry also plans to create a demonstration LEO satellite
communications system network to support South Korean companies to
independently develop core technologies for the system, such as satellite
tracking, handover and link, and help them expand their global business.
As the project has passed the government's preliminary feasibility
study, the ministry said it is allowed to allocate its budget from next year
and start the project.
An LEO satellite, placed in an orbit 300 to 1,500 km in altitude, can
provide high-speed communications with short latency thanks to its close
distance to Earth compared with geostationary orbit satellites.
The 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), a global mobile
telecommunication standards organisation, is also working to standardize the
LEO satellite communications technologies as they have gained the spotlight as
a non-terrestrial network, which can cover even remote areas without
geographical limits.
Many global tech firms, including the US SpaceX and Amazon, have
launched LEO satellite services in a bid to secure an early dominance of this
highly advanced market.
SpaceX's Starlink, for instance, uses a swarm of LEO satellites to
create a global broadband network.
The science ministry urged Korean companies to prepare to enter the
6G-based LEO satellite communications market considering the market is expected
to begin booming in the 2030s after the 6G standardization is completed by
2029.
"We wish to give a fresh boost to the country's digital and space
economy by bolstering our competitiveness in the satellite communications
industry," Ryu Je-myung, head of the network policy department at the
science ministry, said.
--IANS