January 4, 2015   National Space Science Center, the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), today concluded a productive and significant one day in Beijing, witnessing two missions of the Strategic Priority Program (SPP) on Space Science, the Quantum Experiments at the Space Scale (QUESS) mission and the Shijian-10 mission, successfully entering into the Flight Model (FM) production phase.

Council group at CAS ministerial level were debriefed by scientists and engineers in charge of QUESS and Shijian-10’s six subsystems about their major progresses made during prototype development as well as the working plan in the upcoming flight model phase. Resolution and consensus were made regarding both satellites’ phase transition.

QUESS mission is expected to test an experimental quantum key distribution for future secure communications based on high-precision acquiring, tracking and pointing control systems, and to establish an experimental large-scale quantum communication network, while Shijian-10 mission is designed to focus on the behavior of matter and life activities in space.

According to schedule, both missions are expected to launch in the first half of 2016, yet the exact launch dates retain undetermined.