While there are open questions about how China will use its mega-satellite constellations, their deployment will require a significant increase in the country's launch capacity, spurring the development of new commercial rockets, including reusable boosters, to reduce costs and their increase flight speed.
The Long March 5B rocket, developed by China's established state-run launch company, is not the most cost-effective of these options. But the Long March 5B has the lift capacity to put more Guowang satellites into orbit than any other operational Chinese rocket. It is likely that future satellites for Chinese mega-constellations will fly on multiple types of rockets as more launch vehicles come online.
China has until 2032 to launch half of the Guowang constellation—6,496 satellites—according to rradio spectrum regulations issued by the International Telecommunication Union.
A watchful eye
The military implications for Chinese networks like Guowang and Qianfan are not lost on US Space Force leaders. Large mega-constellations such as Starlink, or the future Amazon Kuiper and Guowang systems, have the advantage of being difficult to disable or destroy, compared to a single large communications satellite that provides a large coverage area.
“This is just a continuation of what China has been doing for 20 years,” said General Stephen Whiting, the top general of the US Space Command. “In addition to all the counterspace weapons they've built, they're building capabilities to enable their Army, their Navy, their Air Force, and their Marines to be more lethal, more precise and more far-reaching.”
“We've seen hundreds of (surveillance) satellites, and now it looks like they're launching this vast constellation into low Earth orbit to give them global communications to enable their operations on a broader scale,” Whiting said. “Certainly, it's something we'll be watching to see how that develops. But it's just a continuation of the breathtaking speed at which they've been moving through space.”
Brig. Gen. Anthony Mastalir, commander of U.S. Space Forces in the Indo-Pacific region, said he is most interested in seeing how China integrates constellations like Guowang into their military operations. China is conducting increasingly “extensive and complex” military exercises, Mastalir said, and U.S. commanders will assess whether and how China will integrate Guowang's global communications capabilities into future exercises.
“Seeing how they integrate space into that exercise regime is something we will be watching very closely when it comes to assessing the relative success of their mega-constellation,” Mastalir said.
General Stephen Whiting, head of US Space Command, speaks at the Space Force Association's Spacepower Conference in Orlando, Florida, on December 11, 2024.
Credit: Eric R. Dietrich/US Space Force
In response to questions from Ars at last week's Spacepower Conference in Orlando, Florida, Whiting said Space Command will monitor the deployment of China's satellite constellations, just as they do with other fleets such as Starlink. The difference is that SpaceX, with more than 6,800 Starlink satellites currently in orbit, sends information about its launch schedules and spacecraft positions to Space Command, essentially giving the military a heads up to know where to look when they follow track traffic. China is not doing the same for its satellites.
Space Command currently monitors approximately 47,000 objects in orbit and screens them for collision risks. If a close encounter occurs between two active satellites, Space Command informs their operators.
“If we see that there will be what we call a conjunction, we will forward that information, and we will continue to do that with China,” Whiting said. “We're not getting regular communications back. There have been a few times over the last year where they've contacted us in various ways to notify us of certain things happening in space, such as a satellite re-entering, but that is not a routine, standardized way of communicating.”
Whiting said he has no concerns about the safety of so many mega-constellations coexisting in low Earth orbit, provided their operators “follow the tenants of responsible behavior.”
“We want to make sure that people are doing the right things with predictions and predictive conjunctions, and then not leaving debris in orbit, and all that kind of stuff,” Whiting said.
Still, Whiting said it would be helpful for Space Command to have a regular dialogue with China.
“We believe there should be a way to have discussions about space security,” he said.
