China last year completed a homegrown satellite navigation system known as BeiDou-3. Now anyone can try it out.

Search the word BeiDou on e-commerce platform and you'll find pages of position trackers that support BeiDou alongside other global positioning systems like the GPS of America, Galileo of Europe, and GLONASS of Russia.

China shot up 55 BeiDou satellites over the past 13 years, and 35 of them make up the latest BeiDou-3 system.

Most Android phones right now support BeiDou, and Apple included it for the first time in its iPhone 12 series. Most map apps now use BeiDou alongside GPS. Your phone chooses the system that provides the strongest signal depending on your location. So far, more than six million vehicles nationwide have adopted the system.

It is said that BeiDou provides more accurate positioning in China, because it has three so-called IGSO satellites that ensure BeiDou's accuracy in the Asia-Pacific region at five meters, compared with a 10-meter-accuracy in the rest of the world. China's 14th Five-Year Plan stresses a higher level of high-tech independence. The BeiDou system is one such example.

The year 2020 was a big year for China's space missions. Scientists sent out a Mars probe, and also collected samples from the moon. These set a solid foundation for China's space ventures for the next few years.