Why China is building a Starlink system of its own

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Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. ON December 5th a Long March 6a rocket blasted off from Taiyuan Satellite Centre, in Shanxi province in northern China. Aboard was the third batch of satellites for the Qianfan, or “SpaceSail" network, which aims to deploy a “mega-constellation" of thousands of satellites to beam fast internet access to users anywhere in the world.

Qianfan is similar to Starlink, a satellite-internet service provided by SpaceX, Elon Musk’s rocket company. Starlink has been a big success in the four years since it started operations, signing up airlines, cruise ships and more than 4m individual users, and helping boost SpaceX’s valuation to a reported $350bn. Providing high-speed internet anywhere on Earth requires enormous numbers of satellites.

Starlink already has almost 7,000 satellites in orbit. It has regulatory permission to fly up to 12,000 within the next few years, and has filed paperwork requesting as many as 42,000 in total. Qianfan—which is sometimes also known, confusingly, as “G60 Starlink" after a highway in the south of China where officials want to build a cluster of space companies—appears to be designed on a similarly heroic scale.

Although precise details are hard to come by, documents filed with the International Telecommunication Union, which regulates such things, suggest the constellation could eventually grow to nearly 14,000 satellites. The first two batches, of 18 satellites each, were launched in August and October. Reports in Chinese state media suggest a target of 648 satellites in space by the end of 2025.