If they continue at this rate then in 2 to 3 years, they might surpass Oneweb to become the second largest satelittle constellation after starlink. However, remains to be seen if they can maintain a steady fast launch pace. I believe Guowang has more chance of moving much faster as since they will have more priority for launches .
China's Space Program Thread II
- Thread starter Blitzo
- Start date
If they carry out their plans, they’ll catch up to OneWeb by the end of next year.
China with new solar and charging tech that could be used to improve its space constellation persistent.
I also saw recently them testing a type of soft solar cell that will heater reduce weight on small sats, which is critical for getting that 200k sat constellation.
Do you have a source on this?
The notam for the Shenzhou-23 launch (UTC 14:58-15:38 24 May) and Shenzhou-21return (UTC 11:49-12:21 29 May) have been issued
Shenzhou 23 was rolled out on saturday:
Amazon's Kuiper will have more sats than either GW or Qianfan anyway.
Astrostone (Yushi Space) raises ¥500M to continue (on top of ¥200M they raised in march) the development of their AS-1 reusable launcher with a launch planned in H1 2027
Zenkspace (Zhihang Technology) raises ¥180M and completes a rehearsal of its Zhihang-1 launcher on its mobile pad, with a launch planned next month
Shenzhou 23 was rolled out on saturday:
Maybe in capacity, onewebs are outdated, certainly not in sat count, they revised their 2026 goal down to 324 a few months ago:
Amazon's Kuiper will have more sats than either GW or Qianfan anyway.
Astrostone (Yushi Space) raises ¥500M to continue (on top of ¥200M they raised in march) the development of their AS-1 reusable launcher with a launch planned in H1 2027
Zenkspace (Zhihang Technology) raises ¥180M and completes a rehearsal of its Zhihang-1 launcher on its mobile pad, with a launch planned next month
Probably pushed back to Q3, earliest will be end of Q2 from the looks. Good rule of thumb is basically at this point add 1-2 quarters at minimum to any claimed timelines for Chinese aerospace industry.
I still admire them as I said before . Reusable rocket tech is not easy to achieve at all. So I’m patient with them
(Continued from above... )
Fengyun-3 06 (FY-3-06) is a meterological satellite that will replace Fengyun-3 03, which is set to retire after 10 years of service. FY-3-06 carries 10 different onboard instruments, including a new ultraviolet hyperspectral imager for ozone monitoring.
Great work by Scott Tilley here. Basically he used a home ground station to capture a live X-band downlink from (FY-3F?) LEO weather satellite during a pass over the Salish Sea. Then he decoded and processed the data from the Medium Resolution Spectral Imager instrument (中分辨率光谱成像仪), which has native 250m res true-color composites, and cross-referenced pixel anomalies with live AIS data to confirm it was the BC Ferries ship.
In general agreement. New players throughout the entire Chinese space supply chain are popping up like mushrooms after a rainstorm (central government setting the direction), and so far, in the launch-provider segment, Landspace is one of the most impressive organizations next to the National Teams.
The launch business is technically demanding in the extreme. As an illustration, the late-2024 failure of the Lijian-1 (Y6) launch was traced by CAS Space (another impressive launch provider) to damage sustained (during installation) by an electrical cable in the third-stage thrust vector control system; apparently, the damage was not sufficient to cause a scrub but the cable later failed due to launch vibrations which in turn led to the 3rd stage losing attitude control and eventual vehicle loss. So any minor problem in a launch vehicle, in the organization setup, or unexpected changes in the conditions and scheduling at the launch site can cause lengthy launch delays. Nevertheless, Landspace's ZQ-3 is neck and neck with CALT's CZ-10A/B to achieve China's first sucessful recovery of a 1st stage booster during an orbital launch attempt. it's best to just be patient and give these people time to minimize potential problems.