Musk vs. China ... in Space
Could it be, the only organizations that are capable of competing with CEO Elon Musk’s SpaceX are sovereign nations? It is perhaps no surprise that Chinese authorities and the media have embraced the narrative of China’s low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite company, Spacesail, described as taking on SpaceX in the race to deliver Internet service from space.
The latest news from Spacesail was the signing of a memorandum with Telebras to provide satellite communications and broadband Internet service to Brazil. The announcement follows a decision by Brazil’s Supreme Court temporarily freezing the bank accounts of Starlink in the country “to force billionaire Elon Musk to pay fines in a dispute between the court and social media platform X,” according to a Reuters report. Separately, Starlink counts the Brazilian armed forces among its existing clients, Reuters says.
Initiated in 2023, the Spacesail Constellation, or G60 Starlink, is a megaconstellation conceived as part of the “Shanghai Action Plan to Promote Commercial Aerospace Development and Create a Space Information Industry Highland (2023-2025),” according to Wikipedia. The satellites and constellation are being created by Shanghai Spacecom Satellite Technology.
The objective of the program is to ultimately have 15,000 satellites in the Spacesail constellation, of which about 100 have been launched to date. The first launch took place August 6, 2024, and was described as a success, though Wikipedia quotes the U.S. Space Command as reporting “that soon after the delivery of 18 satellites, the upper stage of Long March 6A broke apart and created a cloud of debris of ‘over 300 pieces of trackable debris in low-Earth orbit.’”
China is no stranger to space debris, having destroyed one of its own defunct weather satellites in 2007, with an anti-satellite missile creating a threat to satellites that persists and will persist for decades. Some wags may be reminded of the Intelsat 708 launch in 1996 which diverted two seconds into its launch, crashing into a nearby village. That crash led directly to the U.S. imposition of the International Traffic in Arms Regulations which effectively ended collaboration between the U.S. and China over space technology.
SpaceX’s Starlink has more than 6,000 satellites already in orbit and is used by consumers, companies, and governments. The Reuters report highlights China’s concern regarding the use of Starlink satellites as part of the fighting in Ukraine and the need for China to have a comparable capability to support its own military.
With its vertical integration and re-usable rockets, SpaceX has fundamentally altered the economics of the launch industry while simultaneously restoring U.S. launch capacity, credibility, and reliability. Organizations such as Rocket Labs and Amazon’s Kuiper are seeking to be competitive alternatives. Now China has entered the race.
Reuters says the Spacesail-Telebras deal marks the start of the constellation’s development of overseas business. With dozens of sovereign nations reaching out for satellite-based broadband communications it clearly marks an important turning point in the race to deliver broadband from space. Perhaps China will soon be talking about Belt and Road and … Spacesail.