Hello and welcome to another episode of the Dongfang Hour China Aero/Space News Roundup! In this episode, we bring you the following updates on Chinese space:
1) ChinaSat-16 5G Test
ChinaSat announced the country’s first 5G broadband test using Ka-band GEO-HTS capacity, with the company’s ChinaSat-16 satellite. The tests were carried out in collaboration with China Mobile and Huawei, and achieved download speeds of ~90 Mbps, upload speeds of 3.5 Mbps, and ping of >700 ms (long way to GEO). The press release notes that China Satcom was also the first company in China to do 4G via Ka-band satellite, and that they are planning for 5G and 6G via GEO-HTS.
2) Launch of Tiantong-1 02
November the 12th saw the launch of the Tiantong-1 02 satellite into GEO orbit, riding on a Long March 3B..
The satellite is the second GEO satellite of the Tiantong-1 GEO constellation (Tiantong-1 01 was launched in 2016). Tiantong-1 constellation, once completed, will cover China, the Western Pacific, Central Asia and the Middle East. The 3rd and ultimate satellite will be Tiantong-1 03, to be launched next year. There are discussions to extend the constellation for a global coverage (Tiantong 04, 05, in 2023 and 2025).
In the long run, Tiantong-1 could be a challenge to Thuraya and Inmarsat, which do have a market in China or with Chinese companies. Among the challenges: Chinese SoEs could make the switch; also, the Chinese have the reputation of being more aggressive in pricing of bandwidth as well as on the hardware side (terminals).
3) Galaxy Space Funding Round
Galaxy Space completed a B+ round of funding, with the company achieving a valuation of RMB 8 billion, up from RMB 5 billion at the most recent funding round (September 2019), and up from RMB 3 billion as of 2 years ago (funding round in November 2018). Noteworthily, the first investor mentioned in this round is the 南通科技创业投资, which is, according to Tianyancha, relatively old and well-established as far as city-level VCs go (founded in 2011, a bunch of existing investments in areas like e-health). Other investors include Shunwei, Matrix China, and Chaos China (great name for a VC).
The amount of funding was not specified, but funding will go towards the construction of Galaxy Space’s previously unveiled “Satellite Superfactory”, in Nantong, near Shanghai. The factory will aim to be highly automated, and produce 300-500 satellites per year, with this specifically stated as helping to support the April 20, 2020 ruling by NDRC to add Satellite Internet to China’s list of “new infrastructures”. Finally, the above article notes that Galaxy Space’s second satellite is in the final stages of assembly.
4) Appearance of Shandong Space
This past week saw the announcement of yet another commercial rocket company, this time from Shandong Province. Shandong Space (山东宇航) posted a series of job vacancies via the official Wechat account of the Shandong Institute of Space Technology (山东宇航技术研究院). We know very little about the company to now, with a cursory Baidu search revealing essentially zero further information.
5) KFC Truck
“Only in China news of the week: KFC launches autonomous 5G trucks in China. Users can buy their chicken from a fully autonomous food cart outside a Shanghai metro station.
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