China has announced its plan to launch the world's first quantum satellite in July this year. The announcement was made by Pan Jianwei, an academician at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, during a seminar conducted in Shanghai. This state of the art satellite will allow quantum communication between the space and the earth.

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The quantum satellite is part of China's Strategic Priority Program on Space Science which was started in 2011. The program aims to deploy four satellites by the end of this year. Strategic Priority Program launched a dark matter satellite in December last year while a microgravity satellite was launched in April this year.

In a statement, Pan said, "There are many bottlenecks in the information security. The Edward Snowden case has told us that the information in the transmission networks are exposed to risks of being monitored and being attacked by hackers." The new satellite will be used for quantum science experiments.

Quantum mechanics encodes data using photons which ensures that it cannot be copied or captured during transmission. This feature enhances the security of the information exchanged.

Pan Jianwei also stated that the 2,000 km quantum communication main network is expected to become fully operational in the second half of this year. The network connects Beijing and Shanghai and will be available for use to banks and government agencies in the initial phase.

In 2012, Jianwei built the world's first metropolitan area quantum network in Hefei. The network consisted of 46 nodes which facilitated data transfer using real time voice communications and text messages.

The program also plans to launch a hard X-ray telescope in the latter half of the year. The telescope will study neutron stars and black hole.

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