China creates its own Starlink with satellites to connect the world, challenging Elon Musk’s global dominance in digital space
On December 5, a Long March 6a rocket was launched from the Taiyuan Satellite Center in northern China’s Shanxi province. On board was the third batch of satellites for the Qianfan network, or “SpaceSail,” which aims to deploy a “megaconstellation” 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 huge success in the four years since it began operations, signing up airlines, cruise ships and more than 4 million individual users, and helping to boost SpaceX’s valuation to $350 billion.
Providing high-speed internet anywhere on Earth requires a huge number of satellites.
Starlink already has almost 7,000 satellites in orbit. It has regulatory permission to fly up to 12,000 over the next few years, and has filed paperwork requesting up to 42,000 in total.
Qianfan — which is also sometimes known, confusingly, as “G 60 Starlink” after a highway in southern China where officials want to build a cluster of space companies — appears to have been designed on a similarly heroic scale.
While precise details are hard to come by, documents filed with the International Telecommunications 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. Qianfan, which is backed by the Shanghai city government, therefore appears to have beaten GuoWang, a similar constellation backed by China’s central government, to orbit.
The system could help connect people in rural China to the internet. Despite the country’s rapid industrialization, it is believed that around 300 million people do not have regular access to the internet.
Starlink is not an option for these people, as this network does not have an operating license in China, whose authorities administer a sophisticated and widespread system of internet censorship. And Qianfan may find markets abroad too — in addition to China, Starlink is also banned from operating in Iran and Russia.
Even countries that aren’t openly hostile to America could welcome a SpaceX competitor, says Steven Feldstein, an analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace — especially given the close ties between Mr. Musk and Donald Trump, the president-elect of the United States. United States. “Even countries with a more neutral foreign policy, like India or Turkey — this can make them hesitate,” he says.
In November, for example, Qianfan announced an agreement with the Brazilian government.
Earlier this year, Mr. Musk got into a bitter public argument with the Brazilian judge who was investigating X, a social network that Mr. Musk owns.
As part of the dispute, SpaceX’s Brazilian bank accounts were frozen. Afterwards, the company said it would not comply with the judge’s order to block Brazilian users’ access to X, although it later backed down.
Qianfan is part of a suite of technologies that make up China’s space ambitions. “We’ve seen a pretty broad push when it comes to Chinese investment in space technology,” says Mr. Feldstein.
He cites projects such as the Tiangong series of space stations, or the Chang’e 6 mission, which in June became the first probe to return samples collected from the far side of the Moon, as well as China’s ambitions to land astronauts on the Moon by 2030 .
Rather than more scientific firsts or prestige in space exploration, however, Qianfan’s other use will likely be military.
“It is becoming increasingly clear that [megaconstelações] they are a strategically important piece of infrastructure for countries of a certain size and ambition,” says Blaine Curcio, who runs Orbital Gateway Consulting, a Hong Kong-based company that focuses on the Chinese space industry.
China’s government made building a Starlink-style megaconstellation an official priority in 2020. Governments in Europe, India, Russia and Taiwan have expressed interest in building their own constellations.
Starlink proved its military usefulness in Russia’s war against Ukraine, where Ukrainian soldiers came to rely on the system as a means of fast, ubiquitous frontline connectivity, useful for everything from controlling drones to communicating with headquarters. general.
In addition to its uses there, SpaceX has created a dedicated government division called Starshield. It has signed agreements with the United States Space Force and the National Reconnaissance Office, which operates the country’s spy satellites.
In a war, megaconstellations like Starlink and Qianfan, which rely on large numbers of small, cheap satellites, would almost certainly prove more resilient to anti-satellite weapons than systems built from a smaller number of more expensive spacecraft.
China’s military doctrine, Mr. Feldstein says, is moving toward networked militaries that need to transport data between sensors and weapons at high speeds. “There’s no way this can work unless you have reliable connectivity on the battlefield,” he says.
One question is how quickly China can build the system it has designed on paper. The country currently does not have access to reusable (and therefore cheap) rockets like SpaceX’s Falcon 9, which are used to launch Starlink satellites, let alone the much larger and cheaper Starship rocket the company is testing. .
SpaceX has also managed to reduce the cost of the satellites themselves and the high-tech antennas needed to receive their signals on the ground.
But China is good at mass production. And, says Mr. Curcio, it has a thriving cluster of between 40 and 50 rocket-launching startups, many of which are working hard on reusable rockets.
Some of these engineers appear to have taken copious notes: At a trade show in November, the state-controlled China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology unveiled a version of the Long March 9, a new rocket it is developing that bears a striking resemblance to the SpaceX Starship. Apparently, it should make its first flight in 2033.
With information from The Economist*
Source: https://www.ocafezinho.com/2024/12/11/o-imperio-do-meio-conquista-a-internet-global/
