BEIJING, May 19 (Xinhua) -- The following are the highlights of China's key technology news from the past week:

BEIDOU SATELLITE

China sent a new satellite of the BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS) into space from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in Sichuan Province on May 17.

Launched on a Long March-3C carrier rocket, it is the fourth BDS-2 backup satellite and the 45th satellite of the BDS satellite family.

SATELLITE NAVIGATION INDUSTRY

China's satellite navigation and location services industry achieved a total output value of 301.6 billion yuan (about 43.93 billion U.S. dollars) in 2018, up 18.3 percent from the previous year, according to an annual industry report.

The data was published in the White Paper on the Development of China's Satellite Navigation and Location Services Industry (2019), which was released by the GNSS (global navigation satellite system) and LBS (location-based service) Association of China.

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

From voice assistant to face recognition; from defeating master players in Go to crushing professional gamers in strategy game StarCraft; the world has witnessed exciting progress in the development of artificial intelligence (AI).

China's prestigious Tsinghua University has announced it will step up basic research on third-generation AI, in the hope of building trust and preventing abuse and malicious behavior of AI models.

PRODUCTION OF ARTEMISININ

Chinese researchers have developed a new technology to produce artemisinin, the top choice for malaria treatment, on a large scale.

Researchers proposed enhancing contact between the solvent and the leaves by reflux to speed up the artemisinin extraction. The extraction time was reduced from seven hours to four and a half.