Chinese authorities have long expressed interest in deploying one or more satellite networks to beam broadband internet signals to China and countries within its sphere of influence.
Two serious efforts are underway in China to develop rival networks to SpaceX’s Starlink network, which the Chinese government has banned in the country. The first 18 satellites for one of the Chinese networks were launched into low orbit on Tuesday.
The Long March 6A rocket lifted off at 2:42 a.m. EDT (6:42 a.m. UTC) from the Taiyuan Launch Base in northern China’s Shanxi Province, placing the 18 spacecraft into polar orbit. The Long March 6A is one of China’s newest rockets and the country’s first to use solid rocket boosters, capable of launching up to 4.5 tons (9,900 pounds) of payload into a sun-synchronous orbit at an altitude of 700 kilometers (435 miles).
China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation, the largest state contractor in China’s space program, said the rocket placed its 18 payloads of Qianfan satellites into the proper orbit, making the launch mission a complete success.
Qianfan means “thousand sails,” and the 18 satellites launched on Tuesday are the first of thousands of spacecraft planned by the Shanghai Spacecom Satellite Technology Co., Ltd. (SSST), a company backed by the Shanghai municipal government. The network SSST is developing is also known as the “Space Sail Constellation.”
Officials in Shanghai only began releasing details about the constellation last year, and developers of the Shanghai-based giant constellation initially plan to place 1,296 satellites at an altitude of about 1,160 kilometers (721 miles), according to filings with the International Telecommunications Union.
China’s state news agency Xinhua said the constellation would “provide low-latency, high-speed and ultra-reliable satellite broadband internet services to users around the world.”
Open the floodgates?
SSST’s network was previously known as G60 Starlink, a reference to the project’s intention to mimic China’s major transcontinental highways and SpaceX’s broadband service.
Thousand Sails may ultimately consist of more than 14,000 satellites, but like any internet megaconstellation, the size of the constellation can grow as fast as demand requires. It will take SSST years to deploy a 14,000-satellite constellation, if it ever does. SpaceX has been deploying several generations of Starlink satellites to offer new services and increased capacity to meet customer demand.
Chinese officials have released few details about the Qianfan satellite, but backers of the project say the spacecraft has a “standardized and modular” flat-panel design that “meets the need to stack multiple satellites on one rocket,” said Shanghai Ges Aerospace Science and Technology Co., Ltd., a joint venture set up by SSST and the Chinese Academy of Sciences to oversee the satellite’s construction.
This is very similar to the design of SpaceX’s Starlink satellites, which are flat-packed for launch on their Falcon 9 rockets. SpaceX pioneered this method of launching and deploying large numbers of satellites. The approach used for Starlink, and apparently also for Qianfan, makes it more efficient to integrate multiple satellites with the launch vehicle on the ground. It also makes it easier to separate the satellites from the rocket in orbit.
Shanghai’s new Qianfan satellite factory can produce up to 300 spacecraft a year, a project official said in December. Officials had previously said the first 108 satellites in the Qianfan constellation would be launched this year.
SSST announced in February that it had raised more than $900 million from a Chinese sovereign wealth fund, the Shanghai municipal government and venture capitalists. SSST’s origins are tied to a Chinese joint venture with a Germany-based company called KLEO Connect that aimed to develop a small constellation of low-Earth-orbit satellites for data relay services.
China has launched four technology demonstration satellites purportedly linked to its KLEO Connect venture to test communications hardware and electric propulsion systems in orbit. The joint venture collapsed amid a flurry of litigation and the German government filed suit last year. Blocked a complete takeover KLEO Connect was acquired by Chinese investors.
For now, SSST operates its Thousand Sails network alone, and the company is rapidly expanding its satellite manufacturing capacity in Shanghai. But outside of Starlink, companies with ideas for giant constellations face serious headwinds.
OneWeb filed for bankruptcy in 2020, but ultimately launched its entire first-generation network of 633 internet satellites. Amazon has delayed the full-scale rollout of its Project Kuiper megaconstellation, and the launch of the first operational Kuiper internet satellites may be delayed again to 2025. The future of the European Union’s IRIS² satellite internet network is in doubt. Differences of opinion among European governments Regarding project financing.
The Qianfan constellation is less well-known than another satellite internet network planned by China, called Guo Wang (“national network”), which is backed by the Chinese central government. Guo Wang is owned by a state-owned enterprise called SatNet, and its architecture will consist of 13,000 satellites. But China has yet to launch a spacecraft for Project Guo.
It is unclear whether the Thousand Sails network and the Guowang constellation will compete directly; they may target different segments of the broadband market. In any case, China’s restrictive internet policies for terrestrial networks may also have ripple effects on the satellite segment.
Chinese officials acknowledge its military utility Satellite internet services like Starlink have been helping the Ukrainian military in its fight against Russian forces since 2022. A homegrown Starlink-like service would undoubtedly be beneficial to the Chinese military.
In addition to potential domestic civilian users, China could use its satellite internet network as a diplomatic tool to strengthen Beijing’s existing partnerships with developing countries. This could lead to a “leap forward moment in which African countries choose Chinese internet constellations over Western providers, given that much of the infrastructure is already Chinese,” according to the Royal Institute for Security Studies, a British think tank. I wrote in last year’s report.
How China will utilize its satellite constellation remains an open question, but its deployment will require a significant expansion of the country’s launch capacity and spur the development of new commercial rockets, including reusable boosters, to lower costs and increase flight rates.
