The China Aerospace Research Institute has applied to put some satellites into orbit. And by “some,” I mean a total of nearly 200,000, more than ten times more than there are in orbit today. Specifically, the Institute for Radio Spectrum Utilization and Technological Innovation hopes to launch two constellations, each with 96,714 satellites. The application was submitted to the United Nations’ International Telecommunications Union (ITU), which is responsible for ensuring that one country’s satellites do not broadcast on the same frequencies as another country’s satellites. Well, it’s a lot of work to approve an application of this size.
What exactly is China doing? As New Scientist points out, reach may be largely beyond grasp. Last year, the country launched 92 rockets into space, a personal best for the country. But SpaceX launched a record-breaking 165 satellites, and keep in mind that the company’s own Starlink constellation only put 10,000 satellites into orbit. Honestly, that’s an amazing number…China is now trying to beat that number by 20 times. Given the ITU-approved way of working, there will be just 14 years to get all 200,000 satellites into orbit, including milestones along the way: Each constellation must launch one satellite within seven years, then 10,000 satellites each over the next two years, 50,000 satellites every three years after that, and all 100,000 satellites every two years after that. Good luck!
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Land grabbing, but in space, there’s no land there
The Long March 2F rocket lifts off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center – Kevin Frayer/Getty Images
It’s likely that what China is actually doing here is retaining large amounts of communications spectrum and orbital “turf” now and then figuring out how to use them later. Maybe it will only put 20,000 satellites into orbit over the next 14 years, maybe 30,000, but either way, it has the approval to cover that range. It might even try to see if it can exclude competitors by grabbing a bunch of spectrum for itself, though it’s unclear whether that would work. China might just want to see how to manipulate the process to its advantage, who knows.
Of course, China is only catching up to the real powerhouse in space: Rwanda. Yes, as New Scientist points out, the small African country applied for no less than 327,000 satellites in 2021. The results of this power play are…not much. While the rest of the world has just continued launching their own constellations, Rwanda itself has not deployed many satellites yet. Therefore, China may just be making noise to appear powerful without having much real impact.
This all goes to show that Earth’s orbit is rapidly becoming more and more crowded, and space companies and agencies are trying out many new ideas in this unprecedented situation. Some of them may never come to fruition, but every once in a while, some of them might. It won’t be long before the night (and daytime!) skies will be filled with satellites, and it will be a whole new world for us here on Earth.
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