Raw images of Antoine Albeau's incredible 2024 World Speed Record.
On December 1st, Antoine and a hardcore group of windsurfing speed fanatics took to the Luderitz channel to attempt to beat Antoine's 2015 World Record of 53.27 knots.
Antoine had several runs over 53 knots and in the end managed to beat his own record by a good margin, setting a new speed record of 53.49 knots (99 km/h)
9 years after his previous record, Antoine Albeau, 52 years old, is writing a little more windsurfing history with a benchmark time and the 100 km/h average speed over 500 meters now very close.
Ten years ago, Team Vestas Wind ran aground on a reef in the Indian Ocean. The dramatic images of the rescue went around the world.
The night Team Vestas Wind struck the Cargados Carajos Shoals
remains one of the most dramatic nights in The Ocean Race history.
On 29 November 2014, a serious accident occurred during the Volvo Ocean Race when the participating yacht "Vestas Wind" ran aground on a reef.
The crew salvages the equipment over the destroyed sterngrapher: Brian Carlin/Team Vestas Wind/Volvo Ocean Race
Photo: Brian Carlin/Team Vestas Wind/Volvo Ocean Race
The accident and its circumstances
In the middle of the Indian Ocean, around 200 nautical miles north-west of Mauritius, the blue yacht of the Danish team "Vestas Wind" is sailing at a speed of 19 knots with slightly shrouded sheets, operated by just two men. The helmsman on the windward wheel and the trimmer on the grinder are chatting. They are obviously worried. The trimmer runs to the helmsman, returns after a moment and asks something into the companionway. The answer apparently comes from skipper Chris Nicholson: "We're passing some shallows now, 40 metres deep."
"Oh yes, I can see the line exactly," is the answer, probably from the helmsman, who is the only one looking to windward at this moment. He has probably seen the surf line of the reef directly ahead. A person comes out of the companionway, apparently skipper Nicholson, calmly pulls on his oilskin trousers and then looks to windward together with the trimmer. There must be something there. But the helmsman continues to hold course.
The blue yacht was pushed over the reef into the lagoon by the surf
Photo: NCG Operations Room – MRCC Mauritius
Then there's a bang. Suddenly, out of nowhere. First briefly, sharply, almost like a gunshot. The lowered leeboard is sheared off. This is immediately followed by a second, bursting sound, accompanied by strong vibrations. "There's a big rock here! There are rocks here! Come on, hoist the sails!" shouts the trimmer to his mates pouring out of the companionway. The yacht has run aground.
The unthinkable has happened. A high-tech yacht with world-class sailors has hit a charted reef in the middle of the Indian Ocean at full speed, square-rigged and unbraked. It is nothing short of a miracle that nobody was injured.
The force of the impact pushed the yacht far onto the reef. The fact that it did not immediately fall apart completely is due to several circumstances. The boat was in a very favourable position immediately before the collision. As a result, the keel fin was almost horizontal in the water and hardly formed any resistance on the reef. Instead of stopping abruptly, as would probably have happened with a fixed keel, the impact energy was dissipated much more slowly. Driven by the surf at the edge of the reef, the yacht then turned 190 degrees around the keel bomb, which apparently sheared off in the process. In the end, the fatally wounded boat lay in the shallow lagoon with its bow facing the surf. This was the only reason it did not sink.
Skipper Nicholson keeps in touch with the race management via the satellite mobile phone
Photo: Brian Carlin/Team Vestas Wind/Volvo Ocean Race
The incredible documentation
On-board reporter Brian Carlin has the presence of mind. The Irishman, who is responsible for the reporting, presses the crash button. It is only thanks to this action that the rare and highly dramatic video footage is saved. Normally the recording runs in an endless loop, only the last few minutes are saved, the rest is continuously recorded over. The accident button, however, activates all cameras and stops the dubbing function. The images are black and white, with a ghostly greenish tinge. The camera at the stern of the blue boat is in night vision mode.
"I've never seen Brian Carlin do what he did," says race director Knud Frostad later on, himself extremely experienced at sea. "He did his job first instead of putting on a survival suit. He really wanted to save these pictures."
Carlin films himself. In a gloomy scene below deck, he describes the situation: "We've been sitting on the reef for five hours now, the bow section is still intact, which is more than I can say for the stern. We've just heard this cracking sound behind the bulkheads, there's nothing left behind them. The rudders are broken off, the entire stern is destroyed. But at least everyone is okay and we'll hang in there."
The remains of the shipwreck are collected on the beach
Photo: Brian Carlin/Team Vestas Wind/Volvo Ocean Race
Securing the crew
The top priority during these first few hours is to secure the crew and the boat. "There were great dangers for the crew," says skipper Nicholson later. He had "feared the worst. There were a hundred things to do at the same time. We had to close the hatches of the watertight bulkheads, grab the safety bags with the essentials, put on survival suits, take care of the life rafts and the personal locator beacons. So much was happening at once."
The crew is preparing for the worst-case scenario: abandoning the boat. "We're checking the tide table now," says Carlin, "because at high tide it's safer to leave the boat via the stern. Getting out via the bow and swimming through the breaking waves is too dangerous." The area is said to be teeming with sharks and barracudas.
Navigator Wouter Verbraak (l.) and skipper Chris Nicholson discuss the choice of course
Photo: Brian Carlin/Team Vestas Wind/Volvo Ocean Race
This is another reason why skipper Nicholson wants to delay going into the life raft until daybreak and has the manoeuvre practised around 20 times in the meantime. But about two hours before dawn, the deck begins to break. The yacht became too unsafe and the crew went to the island.
In the first light of day, the full extent of the shipwreck becomes clear. The yacht is lying high on the reef, the mast has been left standing, the stern partially torn off. The crew paddles with the life raft to a sandbank, from where they are rescued by a small fishing boat and taken to the relatively safe southern island of the atoll. Everyone is safely on solid ground.
The crew salvages everything that can be saved
Photo: Brian Carlin/Team Vestas Wind/Volvo Ocean Race
The crew holds out on the sandbank in the middle of nowhere for three days. At low tide, they can wade through the knee-deep lagoon from the beach to the boat, and a few fishermen also help with their boats to salvage anything useful. All removable parts are dismantled, environmentally harmful liquids such as diesel or hydraulic oil are secured along with their tanks, as are all the lines and sails. The crew could even have left the atoll a day earlier, but were determined to take more expensive equipment such as the satellite system with them. In the end, a fishing boat took the crew to Port Louis on Mauritius, from where they flew on to Abu Dhabi.
The torn-up boat on the coral. The surf rolls over the edge of the reef at high tide
Photo: Brian Carlin/Team Vestas Wind/Volvo Ocean Race
Causes and error analysis
How could this happen?
How could a professional team, whose eight sailing members have taken part in this race a total of 14 times to date, run onto a reef?
How could the Dutch navigator Wouter Verbraak, then 39, who was taking part in this ocean classic for the third time, miss this reef?
And what role did the Australian skipper Nicholson, then 45 and taking part for the fifth time, play?
On the same day, an astonishing number of experts were guessing at a seemingly absurd explanation, which, however, turned out to be correct. Abu Dhabi skipper Ian Walker, his counterpart Charles Caudrelier from the Chinese team Dongfeng and the German navigator Boris Herrmann all suspected a navigational mishap. A little later, the unlucky skipper Nicholson announces: "We made a mistake."
A comparison between the detail
shown on Expedition/C-Map used on Team Vestas Wind racing boat (Level A/0 1:3.3 million)
and UKHO
Chart 4702 Chagos to Madagascar 1: 3.5 million
In an initial interview, Nicholson tries to explain the stranding:
"It was human error. On the electronic chart, on the first or second zoom level, you could only see that it was 40 metres deep. It went from 3000 to 40 metres, and that was the depth information he (navigator Verbraak, ed.) gave me. That's what we assumed. A simple mistake. You would have had to zoom in a few steps further to see that there was actually land there."
Navigation on these boats is carried out solely on electronic nautical charts, as is the case everywhere in regattas today. The teams only have large-scale charts on board for emergencies. Nicholson is vague on the question of blame: "The skipper is of course responsible. But there are also crew members under him who are responsible for their own areas. And that's where this mistake happened. As skipper, you can't be 100 per cent involved in everything. You also have to trust your people."
So was it all Verbraak's fault? Firstly, the navigator takes the blame. In a post on Facebook, he writes: "I made a big mistake. I checked the area on the electronic charts before lying down for a break after a long day. All I saw were depths of 42 and 80 metres."
The navigator deserves credit for not trying to blame the electronics, such as an alleged power failure or similar. Although that would also have been difficult. Because since the boats are all the same, a system failure on Vestas Wind would have meant that the same thing was highly likely to happen on the other boats. So the way out is blocked by the excuse, and Verbraak becomes the whipping boy. The comments range all the way to "boundless stupidity".
All environmentally hazardous substances and expensive equipment were removed
Photo: Brian Carlin/Team Vestas Wind/Volvo Ocean Race
Consequences for yacht and crew
Wouter Verbraak was fired. The wreckage of the "Vestas Wind" was salvaged and the yacht was repaired so that it could take part in the race again towards the end. Many had not thought this possible. Skipper Chris Nicholson took part in further ocean races in the following years.
In 1997, the Philippines began to claim sovereignty over China's Huangyan Dao.
Their primary reference is the 1734 map, A Hydrographical and Chorographical Chart of the Philippine Islands, created by Spanish cartographer Pedro Murillo Velarde.
The Philippines assert that the "Panacot Shoal" marked on the map refers to Huangyan Dao.
But historical Western maps from different periods show that Huangyan Dao has never been Philippine territory.
This video is based on Professor Li's paper to clarify why Huangyan Dao is not Philippine territory.
European maps from the 18th century show that Huangyan Dao has never been Philippine territory. Zhang Chen has more.
Huangyan Dao is the only exposed reef within China's Zhongsha Islands.
In 1997, the Philippines began to claim sovereignty over Huangyan Dao, citing Western historical maps as evidence.
Galit, Panacot, and Lumbay shown off the coast of Central Luzon in the 1734 map
Their primary reference is the 1734 map, a Hydrographical and Chorographical Chart of the Philippine Islands.
The Philippines asserts that the "Panacot Shoal" marked on the map refers to Huangyan Dao, arguing the name "Panacot" is derived from its native language Tagalog, meaning "threat", and was therefore discovered by Philippine natives.
However, Chinese historical geographer Professor Li Xiaocong from Peking University refutes these claims.
The first reference to Panacot Shoal appears in Velarde's 1734 map, showing three reefs off Luzon's western coast.
1744 Reduced version
The claim that Panacot Shoal represents Huangyan Dao relies on this map and its 1744 edition. However, Huangyan Dao itself was accurately depicted on European maps following a 1748 incident when the British East India Company's ship, Scarborough, ran aground there.
The British subsequently named the reef "Scarborough Shoal."
Additionally, the 1734 and 1744 Spanish maps predate the British shipwreck, indicating that neither Filipinos nor Spaniards were aware of Huangyan Dao at the time. If they had known, the British would have likely avoided the reef. Therefore, the 1734 map does not substantiate Philippine sovereignty over Huangyan Dao.
In April 1898, the United States declared war on Spain. The ensuing Treaty of Paris, signed later that year, ceded the Philippines to the U.S. and set its western boundary at 118 degrees east longitude, while Huangyan Dao lies at 117 degrees 50 minutes east, placing it outside Philippine territory.
In 1902, the Pronouncing Gazetteer and Geographical Dictionary of the Philippine Islands published by the U.S. Government Printing Office detailed the Philippines’ territorial scope as defined by the Treaty of Paris, explicitly placing Huangyan Dao outside Philippine boundaries.
In 1908, the U.S. and the Philippines reaffirmed the boundary at 118 degrees east longitude, the limit set by the Treaty of Paris.
In conclusion, Huangyan Dao was neither discovered by Philippine natives nor ever incorporated within Philippine boundaries. This is substantiated by legal records, historical documentation, and international recognition, including by the United States and the Philippine government itself.
Hours of scuba diving and sending cameras thousands of metres down will help the government to preserve biodiversity.
Cutting edge tech and local knowledge are helping a group of scientists in Papua New Guinea survey the country’s highly biodiverse ocean ecosystems.
They are hoping it will provide the government with data to improve conservation efforts.
Papua New Guinea lies in the coral triangle, one of the most biologically diverse places in our oceans. It is home to more than 2,000 species of fish - some of which are found nowhere else on Earth. 600 hard coral species can be found here with the greatest concentration of clownfish diversity anywhere in the world.
The three-month scientific expedition is a partnership between National Geographic Pristine Seas, the government of Papua New Guinea’s Conservation and Environment Protection Authority (CEPA), and the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS).
“The Coral Triangle is a global marine biodiversity hotspot. It has more species of fish, corals, and anything else in the world. It's the rainforest of the ocean,” explains Dr Alan Friedlander, lead scientist for the National Geographic Pristine Seas’ expedition.
Living and working aboard the Argo research vessel, a typical day could see the team counting seabirds, setting up cameras which can go to incredible depths of 6,000 metres or diving to observe the wildlife living around reefs. Long dives mean they are in the water pretty much all day.
“We actually did some of the deepest deployments of cameras anywhere and found a bunch of really interesting new species for Papua New Guinea, a lot of deep water sharks,” Friedlander says.
Quim preparing documents before coral reef survey near Tunnung Island, New Ireland Province, Papua New Guinea.
“What we typically do on an expedition is we throw everything at it because oftentimes we have the advantage of having the vessel. Not much work has been done in these places, in many of the areas we have gone. So we try to do as comprehensive a job as possible.” Overfishing, warming oceans and pollution all threaten Papua New Guinea’s biodiversity
Jelta Wong, Papua New Guinea’s Minister for Fisheries and Marine Resources says the threat’s its oceans face are “varied and interlinked - from illegal unreported and unregulated fishing to global warming.”
Like many other locations around the world, corals here have suffered over recent months from extremely high marine temperatures. A diverse population of fish which act like “lawnmowers” on the reef can help them to bounce back after bleaching events but that relies on protecting the biodiversity that exists there.
Some large-scale fishing practices, known as illegal, unregulated and unreported fishing, threaten these populations of fish. With a lot of abandoned ordinances from World War II, extremely damaging methods like dynamite fishing are still used in Papua New Guinea. This is extremely dangerous for the fisherman and destructive, obliterating the habitat meaning the fish never return.
Healthy coral reefs in New Ireland Province, Papua New Guinea.
“Because a lot of places now depend on central markets, the monetisation of these resources, oftentimes people don't fish as sustainably as they once did,” Friedlander explains.
Not all fishing is bad, however, providing an income and a vital food source for the people that live there, but Friedlander explains that it needs to be managed better than it currently is.
Poor land use practices too are a threat - runoff from both local and large-scale agricultural activity like palm oil plantations disrupts the ecosystem. Sewage from cesspools also makes its way to the oceans, contributing to the problem. And plastic pollution damages the reef adding to the pressures it already faces. Combining local knowledge with cutting edge research methods
The National Geographic Pristine Seas team never goes to a place unannounced, engaging with local communities about the research they are carrying out before, during and after their expedition.
“We've also had community members out on the boats with us every day, which is great because they tell us about the spots they're most concerned about,” Friedlander says. These voices need to be heard because they are the ones most likely to be affected by the poor quality or poor health of their marine resources and they know the area best.
Freidlander adds that many of the local people engaged in the project ask what they can personally do about climate change.
A school of hundreds of jacks in New Ireland Province, Papua New Guinea.
“What I tell them is it's a global problem that Papua New Guinea did not create. And the countries that have created it, the onus is on them and the national governments to mitigate that.”
But, he says, while many solutions are out of their control, what they can do is the same as everyone else on the planet - take care of their own backyard to slow the effects.
“A lot of the management strategies that we have today were developed thousands of years ago by the islanders.”
Friedlander highlights the Indigenous marine protected areas (MPAs) that exist across the Pacific Ocean.
These are historically almost spiritual places but entangled with that is their place in preserving marine life. He recounts visiting one such area off the coast of Maschu Island in the north of the country and learning about its vital role in the lifecycle of the grouper.
“Groupers only get together around either the new moon or the full moon for only a couple of months out of the year,” he says. “Then these groupers, they come from kilometres away to this one spot and normally they're kind of solitary animals.”
Because they are in a predictable place at a predictable time and distracted by reproduction, their populations have been decimated by overfishing. They can live for up to 60 years and their populations take a long time to regenerate once they are removed from the reef.
Local people have been protecting this spot where they spawn for decades, understanding that allowing them to breed undisturbed will ensure the survival of the species. How does ocean research help with conservation?
In this vastly understudied region, detailed scientific data is needed for the country to effectively manage its marine resources.
In November 2023, Papua New Guinea tripled its ocean protections by announcing nearly 17,000 km² of provincially-protected MPAs in its Lovongai and Murat jurisdictions. These came about through the will of local people and the Wildlife Conservation Society. More than 9,000 people from over 100 Indigenous communities were involved in the consultation. There were some of the first MPAs in the world with measures designed to protect the most threatened sharks and rays.
“The provincial government, with the Wildlife Conservation Society, has been creating some, proposals for large marine protected areas,” Friedlander says. “Nested within that are the local community protected areas. There were a lot of community consultations over the years to create these two large protected areas, but there wasn't a lot of biological information.”
National Geographic Pristine Seas senior marine researcher Alan Friedlander aboard the DeepSee submersible in Rongerik Atoll in t he Marshall Islands.
These places are difficult for researchers to get to and, despite incredible local environmental knowledge, there isn’t much scientific work for the government to use when pitching conservation efforts.
“What we are bringing to the table is this comprehensive data set of everything from seabirds and the shallow water down to the deepest depths,” Friedlander says. “So our data hopefully helps provide some of the information so that the local governments can make wise choices when they create their protected areas, so they're most effective and beneficial to the communities.”
Filmmakers are also working on land to learn about communities’ personal connections to the sea and help memorialise traditional ocean protection practices.
The Pristine Seas team returns to the location of their expedition after all the data has been worked up to share this film and their findings.
“We'll come back to these communities and we'll show the film. We'll highlight to them our findings. We'll show the scientific report,” Friedlander concludes. “What that does is that helps fill in the biological gaps. And then it's up to the national government to hopefully recognise these provincial protected areas.”
Scientists analysing the black debris that closed Sydney beaches this week believe the “tar balls” are likely from an oil spill but have not ruled out a link to a nearby sewage treatment plant.
Bondi, Bronte and Tamarama beaches reopened on Friday after they were closed along with several other eastern suburbs beaches when the mysterious dark spheres washed up on the sand. The balls were first spotted at Coogee beach on Tuesday afternoon.
Randwick council said on Wednesday evening that preliminary test results had identified the spheres as tar balls – which are formed when oil comes into contact with debris and water, usually as a result of oil spills or seepage.
Tests showed the debris was a hydrocarbon-based pollutant – the chief component of petroleum-based products.
Jon Beves, a chemistry expert from University of New South Wales who is part of a team of scientists analysing the debris, said the “most logical answer” was that the balls were formed from crude oil.
However, he said the balls also contained other greasy materials including fatty acids which meant they potentially had come from a sewage outflow instead of an oil spill or leak off the coast.
Beves said the dark spheres probably “mopped up” the fatty acids as they moved through the ocean.
But his team was investigating whether the balls had come from a water treatment plant.
“I wouldn’t rule out it coming out from sewage treatment just yet,” he said.
Beves said locals had claimed they had also been collecting “a similar type of balls for a long time” and his team would try to obtain some to analyse them. “We will see if these smaller grey balls are the same stuff or not.”
Sydney Water, which operates water treatment plants at Bondi and Malabar, has been contacted for comment.
Beves said further test results due next week should confirm if the balls had formed out of crude oil, but it was still possible authorities would never find out where they came from.
NSW Maritime’s executive director, Mark Hutchings, said later on Friday “we can now confirm the balls are made up of fatty acids, chemicals consistent with those found in cleaning and cosmetic products, mixed with some fuel oil”.
The New South Wales environment minister, Penny Sharpe, promised to “throw the book” at anyone found to be responsible.
Sharpe said government agencies were yet to determine the source of the tar balls but she suggested they had come from an offshore oil spill that wasn’t reported to authorities. “I’m very worried about the fact that we’ve had our beautiful beaches polluted by something [and] we still don’t know where it’s come from,” the minister said.
Sharpe said investigators were trying to identify who was responsible.
“I would hope that we can do that and I would also hope that, if we can, we will throw the book at those … involved,” she said.
Coogee, Clovelly, Gordons Bay and north Maroubra beaches remained closed on Friday.
Council employees on jetskis spotted a suspected oil slick out at sea on Wednesday morning, the Randwick council mayor, Dylan Parker, said at the time.
However, the Port Authority of NSW said no oil spills had been reported by vessels.
The EPA said balls had also been observed at Congwong, Frenchmans, Little Bay and Malabar beaches. “At this stage, the origin and contents of the balls remains a mystery,” the watchdog said on Thursday. “But the EPA is conducting extensive testing on a number of samples. While we understand initial Randwick city council testing suggests the presence of hydrocarbon, at this stage EPA tests cannot confirm the contents.”
CSIRO principal research scientist Dr Sharon Hook earlier this week suggested the tar balls could have been caused by a ship illegally emptying its bilge tank.
Hook said bilge tanks carried “weathered oil” that could form tar balls if released into the ocean. “I would hypothesise that it would have been pretty close [to shore] because everything has landed on a couple of beaches that are close together,” she told the ABC. “Some oil will float and some oil will sink and especially the heavy stuff that forms tar balls is likely to sink, so it’s possible something happened and no one told the authorities.”
At @UNSWScience we have been investigating the tar balls that washed up on Coogee and other Sydney beaches. What do we know (and not know!) so far? Here comes our thread! pic.twitter.com/udBtkMDMsd
A model of the BeiDou navigation satellites system is seen at the 2020 China International Fair for Trade in Services (CIFTIS) in Beijing, China September 5, 2020.
China plans in 2027 to test the next generation of Beidou, the country's answer to the U.S.-owned GPS navigation system.
The rollout of the new system, expected to be complete by 2035, will provide users with more precise, real-time navigation
Reuters/Tingshu Wang/File Photo
From LightReading by Gigi Onag China's version of GPS, BeiDou, is poised to build its next generation of satellites as it sets its sights on more projects at home and abroad that would use its satellite-based technology.
China has laid out the plan for the next generation of its homegrown BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS), with three experimental satellites to be launched around 2027, network deployment to begin around 2029, and completion by 2035.
At a symposium in Beijing on Thursday to mark the system's 30th anniversary, the China Satellite Navigation Office (CNSO) said the next generation of the BDS "will provide highly accurate navigation, positioning and timing in real time, with accuracy levels ranging from meters to decimeters."
"It will be characterized by precision and trustworthiness, seamless accessibility, intelligent capabilities, network integration and adaptable flexibility," said Yang Changfeng, chief designer of the BDS, as quoted by the state-run Xinhua News Agency.
The system will support a wide range of ground and space-based user terminals and will integrate seamlessly with other non-satellite navigation and timing technologies.
To complement the next iteration of the BDS, an integrated and efficient ground system will also be established to ensure resource flexibility, data sharing and continuous operations.
Integrating LEO satellites
The CNSO also revealed that the next generation of BDS will have an optimized constellation architecture and will integrate LEO (low Earth orbit) satellites into the BDS constellation.
Currently, 45 BeiDou satellites form a "mixed constellation" above the Earth, which is currently composed of MEO (medium Earth orbit) and HEO (high Earth orbit) satellites.
The addition of LEO satellites to this "hybrid" configuration will further enable BDS to increase the accuracy of the system.
According to Xie Jun, deputy chief designer at BDS, LEO satellites can provide faster positioning speeds and better accuracy from the 10-meter to the 1-meter level, or even the decimeter and centimeter level. "At that point, users will clearly notice that even in environments with interference or obstructions, the BDS will maintain high reliability, with excellent accuracy in positioning and timing," Xie told the China-based Global Times.
BeiDou is one of several global navigation satellite systems – others are Russia's GLONASS and EU's Galileo – that have emerged to challenge the 50-year dominance of GPS in providing positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) services.
These satellite-based navigation systems are used by a range of applications that operate critical infrastructure in a variety of sectors, including military and defense, energy, transportation and telecommunications.
They are also now being used for applications that support industries such as finance and agriculture.
The system is widely used in transportation, agriculture, forestry and fisheries, hydrological monitoring, meteorological monitoring and forecasting, communication systems, power dispatching and emergency response, among others.
It is also gradually being integrated into China's national core infrastructure.
BDS services are now exported to more than 140 countries, including Russia, Pakistan, Belarus and several Arab countries.
A February 2023 paper from Harvard's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs pointed out that the BeiDou constellation is newer and has more satellites than any other system, with more than ten times as many monitoring stations around the world as GPS.
The paper also highlighted the two-way messaging feature, which is only available on BeiDou satellites.
However, BeiDou's two-way messaging feature has some limitations, including the need for a dedicated receiver, which is not yet widely available in the commercial market.
So far, it is mainly available in China.
Illustration: Lau Ka-kuen
BeiDou a critical component of China's 'low-altitude economy'
BeiDou satellites are expected to play a key role in China's nascent "low-altitude economy," where manned and unmanned vehicles deliver goods in small batches at altitudes of up to 1,000 meters.
These services are based on the integration of 5G, navigation and the LEOsat network.
China Mobile has already outlined its plan to support the emerging sector, starting with the rollout of 100 low-altitude demonstration projects by 2025.
These would include applications for low-altitude logistics, medical emergencies, airspace surveillance, emergency rescue and other scenarios.
Beyond China's low-altitude sector, BDS has made significant progress in applying its technology to a range of industries at home and abroad.
In October, the company secured CNY12.7 billion (US$1.78 billion) for new projects, including CNY7.83 billion ($1.1 billion) in investments to adopt the Chinese system for industrial and consumer use.
An early warning system under Indonesia's disaster prevention agency was one of the signatories, although the value of the contract was not disclosed.
Citing Chinese officials, the South China Morning Post reported that the BDS system is already being used to help manage seaports in Pakistan, river transport in Myanmar, agriculture in Laos and urban planning in Brunei.
“A whole new world is opening up. A world beneath the sea.”
Those are the opening words of the United States Navy film, “World of the Sea.”
The 1973 documentary that takes the viewer beneath the waves as the narrator explains how the Navy must perform essential support maneuvers underwater, whether it be in submarines or by using divers for missions such as salvage and repair, underwater construction, study of acoustics, or scientific research.
Amidst scenes of divers in the ocean as well as in specialized tanks, the narrator explains
at mark 02:50 how divers need pressurized air to breath in deeper depths, and
at mark 03:25 we see an animated explanation of how a body is decompressed.
The Navy trains divers in a specially constructed ocean simulations facility, shown starting
at mark 04:25. At 4:27, Capt. George S. Bond discusses the Ocean Simulations Facility.
(Capt. George Foote Bond USN was an American physician who was known as a leader in the field of undersea and hyperbaric medicine and the "Father of Saturation Diving)
The research device is capable of simulating ocean depths of more than 2,000 feet, and
at mark 06:15 we watch as a diver is exposed to pressure equal to 1,025 feet and later 1,200 feet. Following the discussion of medical issues in dives, the film switches to engineering concerns starting at mark 07:25, as we watch scenes of naval engineers test the Mark X breathing device, and divers became “swimming laboratories.”
Deep Diving Systems are discussed starting
at mark 10:55, with scenes of the Mark I and Mark II deep dive systems, which were put into use in the mid-1960s, as well as a personnel diving capsule.
At mark 17:05 a navy captain praises advancements made in deep dive systems, and pledges to continue to dive deeper “and seek the limits of human endurance.”
Meanwhile, the navy is working to enhance underwater communication, the narrator explains
Because divers in submersibles are breathing a helium-oxygen gas mixture, their voices can come across as garbled.
At mark 19:11, sailors are shown working on “unscramblers” to solve the problem.
The film continues as we watch divers continue to work underground and study potential environment issues.
At mark 22:00, we’re told how some of the pressurization techniques used by the Navy also have had practical uses in the civilian medical community.
This Deep Diving System shown in the film was built in 1968 to provide a surface habitat for saturation divers returning from great depths.
Divers are sealed in the habitat and become compressed to the same depth at which they will be working.
After their bodies have become saturated the divers will move from the surface to the working depth and return in the diving bell commonly called a Personnel Transfer Capsule or PTC.
Always maintaining the same pressure, work continues on a 24-hour schedule with divers working and resting alternately for 2 to 3 weeks before decompressing to surface pressure.
Quim preparing documents before coral reef survey near Tunnung Island, New Ireland Province, Papua New Guinea.
Healthy coral reefs in New Ireland Province, Papua New Guinea.
National Geographic Pristine Seas senior marine researcher Alan Friedlander aboard the DeepSee submersible in Rongerik Atoll in t he Marshall Islands. 
A model of the BeiDou navigation satellites system is seen at the 2020 China International Fair for Trade in Services (CIFTIS) in Beijing, China September 5, 2020. 
