Micius, the world's first quantum communications satellite, has already sent back the first batch of data to the Beijing Space Control Centre, state-run agency Xinhua reports.
The 202 MB of preliminary data, which is of good quality, was received around 11:56am on Friday by the remote control centre of the Chinese space program in Miyun, in the northern suburbs of Beijing.
Micius, which is named after a physicist and optician who lived in China 2500 years ago, was launched on Tuesday from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre in the Gobi Desert in northwestern China.
With this launch, that puts the country ahead of other powers in the field of quantum research, China aims to work towards creating hacker-proof transmission networks and advance its research on teleportation.
