China launched its Qianfan cluster satellites through the Long March-6 carrier rocket which is from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center in North China’s Shanxi Province on Tuesday to preset orbits reaching 18 satellites. These are to be the first bunch of satellites necessary to form ‘the nation’s own Starlink,’ which may become a ‘turning point’ for the country in the sphere of satellite internet.
The Qianfan megaconstellation project or G60 started in 2023 to offer even more elaborate and of better quality communication services for the domestic consumers. Low earth orbit (LEO) wide screen multimedia satellites over 15,000 are expected to be set up in the long run, an informed media report claimed.
Kang Guohua
‘This will ensure users get stable, high speed internet services particularly in such areas that are not well endowed with communication network hence filling the information divide,’ Kang Guohua, a senior member of Chinese Society of Astronautics, a professor of Aerospace Engineering at Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics said in an interview to the Global Times on Tuesday.
This year, Qianfan may send out 108 satellites and completely establish the regional network with 648 satellites at the end of 2025. In preparation, the constellation is expected to cover the entire world by 2027, and by its ultimate goal at 2030, consist of 15 000 satellites offering combined services including direct mobile communications.
Starlink, SpaceX has launched approximately 5,500 satellites and is in consumer and business use and governmental usage as reported by Reuters.
“In the past few years, Starlink of SpaceX has already gained a reputation as an ‘entrant’ in internet communication industry”, “With the constellation Qianfan having been launched and networking, China has started stepping into this field.” Kang said.
Starlink
Qianfan and Starlink both use modern satellite communications technology and layer and orbit structures. However, the China’s Qianfan constellation focuses on to the multimedia capability and the Broadband communication for different users, added Kang.
Speaking of market saturation, Starlink was already able to obtain quite a success in the American market and went global, whereas Qianfan is centered on delivering premium communication services to anchored domestic users as of now. However, as the project develops and the technology gets more advanced and the first constellations are already being put into orbit, the expansion into the international market is in the “scope of the foreseeable future,” the expert stated.
Kang
Kang stated that the construction of the Starlink now implies increasingly close orbits, which have a negative impact on the progress of the other countries in the space industry. He urged international collaboration in finding and implementing solutions to the generated threat of colliding satellites and the problem of space debris in turn.
Practical markets for this concept may include mobile innovation, autonomous driving, disaster prevention and reduction, the Internet of Things, and satellite internet in Qianfan constellation, which would be a development opportunity for satellite internet, observers said.
Advantages
In comparison with the geostationary satellites with larger orbit, LEO satellites have many advantages in the communication aspect which include proximity in distance, minimal delays in transmission, minimum link loss, the ability to launch flexibly, usability in various application, and finally relatively low cost in manufacturing.
Therefore, several nations have embarked on the implementation of LEO satellite constellations, putting this as a new trend in growth.
China currently has three megaconstellation projects with an expected scale reaching 10,000 satellites: on-going projects are the G60 project, the state-owned China Satellite Network Group Co.’s GW Constellation project as well as a powerful private Chinese space company, Landspace’s Honghu-3 Constellation.
GW Constellation
The GW Constellation will have total of 12,992 satellites it plans to launch while Honghu-3 intends to launch 10,000 satellites on 160 orbital planes. The total figure of those services and applications that have adopted satellite in China has been estimated to be about forty thousand.
Landspace Rocket R&D’s General Manager Dai Zheng also said during an interview with the GT that the growth rate of China’s commercial aerospace industry will skyrocket within the next two-to-three years.
From the second half of 2025, or the first half of 2026, China’s satellite internet constellations will enter a high-density launch stage, Dai added.