China's Space Program Thread II
- Thread starter Blitzo
- Start date
Suntan Space Telescope or CSST update. Epects to be used on China's space station.
I'm honestly a little shocked by this. China has applied to ITU to add 200k+ satellites to LEO, including CTC-1 and CTC-2, both having 967114 satellites. Those are huge constellation. It's not clear how they will get granted that many spots. Looks like SpaceSail is adding 1296 more also. China Mobile & China Sat/Guowang are also looking to add more sats.
Looks like this organization 无线电创新院 was just established on 2025/12/30 and involves NUAA, CETC, Beijing Jiaoda, China satellite network group and a couple of Hebei govt and 国家无线电监测中心 (first time I have heard of these guys).
"They will focus on technologies such as detection and testing in the field of low-altitude electromagnetic space security, safety defense system integration, airspace electromagnetic space security assessment, and low-altitude airspace safety supervision services"
This is interesting.
Isn't there supposed to be a ~100K limit on how many LEO satellites can fit in the orbitals?
I'm pretty sure there is a time limit on this, was it 5 years or 10, that you have to have a certain amount of satellites operational to hold the slot.
Could be cubesats with electric propulsion to change orbit, a 3U is around 3 kg so 96714 will need only ~12x LM5B or equivalent.
Yes, such restrictions do exist. Ten percent of the satellites must be launched within two years, and 50% within five years. Moreover, there is a precedent. The European company Rivada Space planned to launch 576 satellites by mid-2026 in order to comply with its license, but the company lost its ITU filings. What is interesting here is that this initially was a German–Chinese project, KLEO Connect, from which G60/Qianfan later emerged.
There's no way they'll launch another 20,000 satellites ontop of whatever is planned/required for Qianfan and Guowang in the next two years. The US doesn't even have that capacity and China is a decade away from their launch rate.