On August 16, 2016, China launched the Quantum Experiments at Space Scale (QUESS) satellite, nicknamed Micius after an ancient Chinese philosopher, from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the Gobi Desert. The satellite, built by the National Space Science Center (NSSC) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), was the world’s first satellite dedicated entirely to quantum science experiments.
The Micius satellite had a mass of approximately 640 kg and was placed in a sun-synchronous orbit at an altitude of about 500 km. It was equipped with a quantum key distribution transmitter, an entangled-photon source, and a quantum teleportation receiver and analyzer. The mission was designed to conduct satellite-to-ground quantum key distribution (QKD), test Bell’s inequality at distances exceeding 1,200 km, and perform quantum teleportation from ground to satellite.
The chief scientist of the mission was Pan Jianwei of the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC). The University of Vienna and the Austrian Academy of Sciences operated the satellite’s European receiving stations, led by physicist Anton Zeilinger. Ground stations in China were located at Xinglong (near Beijing), Nanshan (near Urumqi), Delingha, Lijiang, and Ngari in Tibet.
The total mission cost was approximately US$100 million. In 2017, the Micius team achieved satellite-to-ground QKD and ground-to-satellite quantum teleportation, with results published in Nature. An intercontinental quantum-encrypted video call between Beijing and Vienna was conducted on September 29, 2017, using the satellite as a trusted relay.