China's Commercial Meteorological Satellites
Plus a bunch of launches 🚀 a laser comms test from Laser Starcom 🛰️ and a big conference in Shenzhen 🌆
Dear Readers,
Happy Monday, and a shout-out to the bump in new subs that signed up over the past few weeks. Welcome and thanks for stopping by. To keep the momentum going, if you have a friend or colleague that you think would enjoy the China Space Monitor, feel free to forward it on over to them.
The second half of March has brought a whole bunch of launches, an impressive laser comms test from Laser Starcom, and a huge space conference in Shenzhen. But first, a deep-dive into the very trending topic of China’s commercial meteorological data.
China’s Commercial Meteorological Data
A brief aside before digging in: this is a departure from my usual areas of expertise, so bear with me and take everything I say with a grain of salt.
A trending topic in China over the past couple of years, and accelerating over these few months, has been GNSS radio occultation satellites. Reasonable people might ask, what exactly are GNSS radio occultation satellites? GNSS radio occultation is a technology that leverages radio transmissions from navigation satellites to measure atmospheric parameters. The target satellite receives a signal from a navigation satellite via the earth’s atmosphere, allowing the target satellite to ascertain atmospheric data based on the radio signal’s parameters. A simple diagram from Wikipedia (coincidentally enough, using a Formosat satellite) demonstrates below.
By collecting lots of data points of the behavior of GNSS radio signals through the atmosphere, the receiving satellites can understand characteristics of the atmosphere at different layers, helping to improve weather forecasting and generally providing a better understanding of atmospheric behavior. This can include understanding atmospheric temperature, pressure, and other characteristics, a topic that is clearly becoming more important as issues such as climate change come front and center.
Historically, most GNSS radio occultation missions have been conducted by space programs, including (again, referring to Wikipedia), the CHAMP satellite from Germany’s DLR, GRACE satellites from NASA, and the MetOp constellation from ESA’s EUMETSAT. These have been big, exquisite satellites with long development timelines, lots of instruments, and (probably), pretty big budgets.
In recent years, we’ve seen a few commercial companies emerge, including Tomorrow.io, but these companies are typically weather data companies collecting information from many sources, of which satellite is a relatively small piece of a bigger puzzle. This is not the case in China, where we’ve seen two separate entities making a major run at commercial weather data using GNSS radio occultation data acquired from batches of smaller satellites that are being deployed rapidly.
The Rise of Commercial GNSS Radio Occultation in China
Commercial GNSS radio occultation did not exist in China until late 2022, making it a very new trend in the country’s commercial space sector. And yet, since that time, we have seen two constellations make rapid progress by deploying dozens of satellites each. Recent months have seen both constellations ink agreements with the China Meteorological Administration to provide “commercial meteorological data”, giving them the implicit seal of approval of the government, and for one of the constellations, the agreement seems to have accelerated their deployment. One of these constellations is bankrolled by a usual suspect state-owned behemoth, and unusually, the other one is a startup.
The Upstart: Yunyao Yuhang
To give credit where credit is due, Yunyao Yuhang was the inspiration for this month’s article. Why? During the month of March, Yunyao Yuhang achieved the impressive feat of launching 2 batches of 6 satellites each, just 5 days apart. On 17 March, Yunyao Yuhang sent the Yunyao-55 to Yunyao-60 satellites into orbit on a Ceres-1 rocket. And on 21 March, they sent Yunyao-43 to Yunyao-48 (I didn’t make up the numbering order) into orbit on yet another Ceres-1, bringing their total number of satellites on-orbit to 46, this up from a grand total of zero as recently as July 2022.
This was an acceleration for a company already making good progress, with Yunyao having launched 24 satellites in 2024 and another 8 before that (plus 4 more in January 2025). The two launches this month may have been partly enabled by a “hundreds of millions of Yuan” funding round in late 2024, with the money coming from two city governments in Jiangsu Province (Huishan and Taicang).
Yunyao Yuhang (云遥宇航, which literally means “Cloud Remote (Sensing) Space”) was established in March 2019 in the Northeastern city of Tianjin. For a project of its size, Yunyao has relatively few links to large state-affiliated entities, whether SOEs or the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Most of their state support seems to have come from supportive policies published by the Tianjin Binhai New Area Government, as well as sub-national government funding in recent funding rounds mentioned above.
Company Founder and CEO Li Fenghui worked at CAST for several years, participating in the development of more than 40 satellites, before doing a PhD program at Tianjin University, during which time he set up Yunyao with plans to launch 90 meteorological smallsats to an orbit of 500-800km.
In an interview earlier this month, Li noted that in addition to the 90 smallsats that are still planned, Yunyao now plans 24 larger satellites…“of the same size as the Fengyun meteorological satellites”. This would be a huge step for the company, given that their existing satellites have weighed some ~40kg apiece, and Fengyun satellites are several tons each. To date, the overwhelming majority (possibly all) of Yunyao’s satellites have been built by CGSTL, and as of now, the company has no plans to build their own satellites (no coincidence that CGSTL also builds 1-ton level satellites).
Today, Yunyao satellites are being used for a number of commercial applications. The company developed a global ocean weather navigation system, launched in June 2024. As of this month, it has served more than 300 voyages. The company’s big break, however, likely came in December 2024, when the China Meteorological Administration (CMA) announced that it would start incorporating 15,000 data points per day from Yunyao Yuhang into their systems. The 15,000 data points comes from just 12 Yunyao satellites, meaning that the full constellation of ~46 satellites could be generating some 60,000 data points per day.
The CMA announcement mentioned that the data would be used alongside data from the Fengyun satellites, and that this commercial data would increase the number of atmospheric profile products assimilated daily in China’s global forecast system by 2.48 times. At the time, Director of the National Satellite Meteorology Center Wang Jinsong noted that “commercial small satellites have the advantages of being flexible, customizable and distributed. They can better meet the needs of meteorological services by coordinating observations with Fengyun meteorological satellites”.
With endorsement from the CMA, Yunyao Yuhang is likely to see even faster development and more governmental green flags in the future, which is impressive given how quickly they’ve already been moving. With most everything going their way as of now, there may be only one thing that could derail Yunyao Yuhang in the near-medium term: a better-funded competitor.
The Behemoth: CASIC’s Tianmu Constellation
While Yunyao Yuhang is a ragtag bunch of guys and girls in Tianjin, the other commercial meteorological company in China, Aerospace Tianmu, is decidedly not. And while there might be room for two commercial meteorological companies in China, it’s a niche of a niche market and two might be a crowd.
Aerospace Tianmu (航天天目, literally “Aerospace Sky Eye”) is effectively a CASIC subsidiary, with Chinese company registration site Tianyancha reporting that they are ~67% owned by CASIC companies. CASIC is a ~US$40B per year revenue SOE with business interests in space, missiles, and related sectors, giving Tianmu quite a bit of financial and political heft. In addition to support from CASIC, Tianmu enjoys support from the Chongqing City Government, in Southwestern China, and the city’s Xiyong Microelectronic Industrial Park.
The Park has “set up production lines for satellite payloads including onboard computers and propulsion systems”. As of January 2025, the production lines were expected to reach capacity of 100 computers per year by EOY 2025, and 1,000 propulsion systems “in the next 1-2 years”. Compared to Yunyao Yuhang, Tianmu therefore has a more vertically-integrated approach, reflecting their more robust financial and industrial support. Tianmu also benefits from an apparent tie-up with satellite manufacturer Magic Cube of Shenzhen, and their Chongqing subsidiary Kaituo Satellite.
This vertically-integrated approach has done okay thus far, with Tianmu having launched 22 satellites across 6 batches in a ~12 month period between January 2023 and January 2024. These satellites “produce data products such as atmospheric temperature, humidity, pressure profiles, soil moisture, sea surface wind speed, sea ice coverage and thickness, and orbital atmospheric density”.
When the CMA announced that they would be using 15,000 Yunyao data points per day for their models, they announced that they’d be using 30,000 per day from Tianmu, with the constellation providing atmospheric profiles with a spatial resolution of 300km x 300km and temporal resolution of 6 hours.
In short, Tianmu launched 22 satellites in a year, and has since started gaining commercial traction with those satellites. They have a big production line ready to build computers, thrusters, and more. Which begs the question: what’s next? A mid-2024 article quoted Tianmu as saying they would launch the 2nd-phase constellation “in due course”. Not so helpful.
A second article from a Chinese blogger (i.e. not an official source) in late 2024 noted that Tianmu had announced a tender for launches, with the tender being won by Galactic Energy. The author noted that the focus of the 2nd-gen constellation will be electromagnetic spectrum monitoring, which would seem a sensible move from Tianmu given their deep links to CASIC and the lack of a dedicated Chinese “commercial” constellation for this purpose today.
Moving forward, this much is clear: we should expect to see more commercial meteorological data, in particular GNSS occultation data, coming out of China. This data is already being fed into CMA models and commercialized in other ways. If two is a crowd then three is overcrowding, so we’re not so likely to see more commercial meteorological players emerge from China, but stranger things have happened.
While Yunyao Yuhang is an asset-light startup that benefits from being in a big and moderately prosperous (but heavily indebted) city, Aerospace Tianmu is a vertically-integrated subsidiary of a state-owned behemoth. Both approaches have thus far bore fruit, partly because meteorological data is a trending topic in China these days.
My two cents on the future direction of this market: Yunyao Yuhang seems nimble, young, and motivated, with CEO Li Fenghui giving some excellent interviews that show his passion for meteorological data. Time will tell. Thanks for reading.
And in other news this month
Several more launches in the second half of this month, including:
TJS-16, launched on 30th March into GEO orbit with all the usual details (or lack thereof) of the Tongxin Jishu Shiyan (Communications Technology Test) satellites.
SuperView NEO 3-02, launched on 15 March with some interesting supplier info emerging from this high-resolution remote sensing satellite
Two AirSat satellites launched on 17 March alongside the first batch of 6 Yunyao Yuhang satellites.
And the Tianlian-2 04 relay satellite launched on a LM-3B rocket on 26 March. The satellite joins the other Tianlian relay satellites in GEO, with their main purpose being to connect the Chinese Space Station, but with a clear dual-use angle as well. Lots of juicy supplier data points emerging from the Chinese internet on this one.
A satellite-to-ground quantum key distribution test was completed using the Jinan-1 quantum microsatellite over a distance of more than 12,000km. The test took place between Beijing and Stellenbosch, South Africa, with CAS SECM providing a bit more insight on the satellites and the technology utilized.
Xingyu Space emerged from stealth mode with the announcement of a “tens of millions of Yuan” Angel round, with plans to build 3D-printed rocket engines. Xingyu is one of several companies aiming to use 3D printing technology in the launch sector, with well-established players such as iStar Aerospace already doing so today.
Thousand Sails manufacturer Genesat announced the commencement of their second-stage factory, which plans for a manufacturing capacity of 150 “ton-level” satellites, or alternatively 300 “500kg-level” satellites per year. The ton-level satellite number is of interest, implying that future Thousand Sails satellites may be larger than the first-generation (approx. 300kg each).
Galaxy Space won some nice accolades when their phased-array antenna was named to the list of “100 New Technologies and Products” at the 2025 Zhongguancun Forum Annual Meeting and Technology Trading Conference. Pictured below, the antenna was described as “China’s first batch of satellite-borne millimeter-wave antenna-in-package tile-type multi-beam phased-array antennas”. A mouthful, yes, but congrats to the good folks at Galaxy Space nonetheless.
Songjiang District of Shanghai published a boatload of incentives for space projects, including rebates on R&D expenses, office space, and upstream and downstream collaboration. Songjiang is notably home to the Thousand Sails project, and the incentives, while small in the context of a global NGSO constellation, are not trivial at quite some millions of Yuan.
We found an interesting piece about a planned mission to Neptune for around 2033. The mission would take something like a decade in its entirety, giving perspective on the unbelievable scale of just our solar system.
And finally, this month saw the 2025 Commercial Space Conference and Exhibition take place in Shenzhen. One of the better conferences we’ve seen, OGC had a person on the ground in China’s Silicon Valley taking copious notes and shaking hands. Reach out for more info about our conference debrief materials.
If you’ve made it all the way here, as always a big thanks for reading. See you in a few weeks.
Best Regards,
Blaine Curcio
Good roundup. Thanks again.
Wonder how much money does China spend on Research & Development in its Space program compared to the U.S.A. spending on Militarist Wars around the world?
This statistic would explain a huge part of the reason for the Decline of the West.