China's LEOsat project still at the starting gate

What ever happened to Guowang, China's own low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellite project? It's been more than two years since the government announced the merger of the two smaller state-backed satellite projects into a single entity, known as Guowang (literally "national network") and filed to the ITU for spectrum for nearly 13,000 satellites.

Since then, we have had not a single official word from the government or the two main contractors, CASC and CASIC. That's only partly due to Beijing's notorious shyness about disclosure. It seems China's aerospace industry is still working on key launch and satellite technologies.

While SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket is routinely hoisting up to 60 satellites into orbit at a time – or 20 of the much bigger new generation satellites – China's best effort so far is half a dozen.

But it's been making progress. In June, it lifted an experimental stackable satellite into orbit. A privately held firm Space Pioneer is aiming to use liquid-fueled rockets to carry a payload of 60 satellites in the next two years.

In the meantime, Starlink has been extending its lead, not just over China, but its western rivals including Amazon's Project Kuiper and the UK's OneWeb.

'Creating space junk'

According to a website run by astronomer Jonathan McDowell, which tracks all satellites and space debris, 4,509 Starlink satellites are now in orbit. That compares with 1,800 at the end of 2021.

One China low-Earth orbit network that is going ahead is a remote sensing and comms constellation that will provide global emergency rescue and disaster prevention, due to go into service by 2030.

The 300 satellites will sit in ultra-low orbit – about 150km to 300km above the Earth's surface, CASIC has said. That compares with Starlink satellites situated at around 550km.

While the Guowang project is still at the starting gate, Chinese official media has been lining up to sound off over Starlink. In the latest instance, a researcher from CASC published an op-ed in the communist party's People's Daily last week castigating the US and Starlink for monopolizing spectrum and creating more space junk.

The writer, Qu Wei, who is also a member of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, said: "The total number of Starlink satellites is too large, making low-Earth orbit very crowded. These satellites also occupy a large amount of radio frequency resources, which limits the development of space by other countries."

He warned that the Starlink network would generate a great deal more space debris, with 300 of the 4,800 satellites launched so far failing to reach orbit, and with thousands more due to be launched.

He also said Starlink had strong military capabilities, including the ability to closely monitor missile and rocket launches and to jam navigation signals.

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— Robert Clark, contributing editor, special to Light Reading