China’s launch of a cluster of 18 satellites from a new commercial spaceport on the tropical island province of Hainan is a sign that the country’s space industry is ready to enter the global market, analysts said.
The launch broke new ground for China’s space industry, with a state-developed Long March-8 Y6 rocket taking part in a “ride-share” mission for the first time by lifting a group of satellites into orbit on behalf of a commercial enterprise.
The satellites are the fifth installment of the Spacesail, or Thousand Sails, project – a rival to Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite internet service run by the Chinese company Shanghai Spacecom Satellite Technology.
The mission was also the first launch from a new launch pad at the spaceport in Hainan – China’s first commercially-run space centre, which began operating last year. Its success means that the spaceport now has two working launch pads available for future missions.
“This launch is also a technology demonstration of sorts for commercial launches using home-grown space technology,” said Richard de Grijs, a professor at Macquarie University in Australia.
The Spacesail project – which is designed to provide internet access in remote, hard-to-connect areas – ultimately aims to deploy a constellation of 14,000 satellites and compete with Starlink on the international market, according to US-headquartered media outlet Space News.
