There are unanswered questions about how China will utilize its giant satellite constellation, but its deployment will require a significant increase in the country’s launch capacity, with the aim of reducing costs and increasing flight speeds. will accelerate the development of new commercial rockets, including reusable boosters.
The Long March 5B rocket, developed by China’s incumbent state-run launch company, is not the most cost-effective of these options. However, the Long March 5B has the lift capacity to carry more King satellites into orbit than any other Chinese operational rocket. As more launchers become operational, it is likely that in the future China’s mega-constellation of satellites will fly on multiple types of rockets.
China needs to launch half of the King Constellation by 2032—6,496 satellites—According to radio spectrum regulations promulgated by the International Telecommunication Union.
watching eyes
The military influence of Wang and Qianfan on China’s networks is not lost on U.S. Space Force leaders. Large mega-constellations like Starlink and the future Amazon Kuiper and Guowang systems have the advantage of being difficult to disable or destroy compared to a single large communications satellite covering a wide area.
“This is just a continuation of what China has been doing for about 20 years,” said Gen. Stephen Whiting, commander in chief of the U.S. Space Command. “In addition to all the counterspace weapons they’ve built, they’re building capabilities that will allow the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines to be more lethal, more accurate, and have longer ranges. ”
“We’ve seen hundreds of (surveillance) satellites, and now they’re launching this proliferated constellation of low-Earth orbit satellites to provide global communications that will allow them to operate on a broader scale. “It seems like they are,” Whiting said. “Certainly, we’ll be watching to see how it develops. But it’s just a continuation of the breathtaking speed with which they’ve been moving through space.”
Brigadier General Anthony Masterill, commander of U.S. Space Command in the Indo-Pacific region, said he is most interested in how China integrates space forces like Wang into its military operations. Masteril said China is conducting increasingly “sophisticated and complex” military exercises, and U.S. commanders are wondering whether and how China will incorporate the King’s global communications capabilities into future exercises. He said he would evaluate it.
“Seeing how they integrate space across their exercise regime is something we will be watching very closely in terms of assessing the relative success of their mega-constellations. “Yes,” Masteril said.
In response to a question from Ars at the Space Power Conference last week in Orlando, Florida, Whiting said the Space Force, like other fleets such as Starlink, will track the deployment of China’s satellite constellation. . The difference is that SpaceX, which currently has more than 6,800 Starlink satellites in orbit, sends information about launch schedules and spacecraft locations to the Space Force, essentially allowing the military to control orbital traffic. It provides advance information so you know where to look when tracking. China does not do the same for its own satellites.
The Space Force currently monitors about 47,000 objects in orbit, screening them for potential collisions. If a close encounter is likely to occur between two active satellites, the Space Force will notify its operators.
“When we know there’s going to be a so-called conjunction, we send that information and we continue to do that to China as well,” Whiting said. “Regular communications are not coming back. There have been several times over the last year where they have contacted us in various ways to let us know about things that are happening in space, such as satellite re-entry. It’s not a routine, standardized way of communicating.”
Whiting said he is not concerned about the safety of so many giant constellations coexisting in low Earth orbit, as long as operators “adhere to the tenets of responsible behavior.”
“We want to make sure that people are doing everything right, including forecasting and predictive coupling and not leaving debris in orbit,” Whiting said.
Still, Whiting said it would be beneficial for the Space Force to have regular dialogue with China.
“We think there should be a way to discuss space safety,” he said.
