Scenes from Zhuhai
Plus an Omani satellite launch 🇴🇲, a Sino-Russian cubesat 🇷🇺 🇨🇳 and free BeiDou SMS until end of the year 🛰️
Dear Readers,
Happy weekend, and a belated Happy Thanksgiving 🦃 to those who celebrate. This month, we saw a handful of interesting things get launched, including an Omani 🇴🇲 satellite, a pair of laser comms satellites, and a Tianzhou cargo spacecraft. But before digging into any of that, a deep-dive into this month’s Zhuhai Airshow.
What is the Zhuhai Airshow?
Zhuhai, for those keeping track at home, is not a particularly large city. Within China, is it likely most famous for being the Mainland Chinese city immediately bordering the Macau Special Administrative Region, basically a sleepy seaside city of a couple million (tiny by Chinese standards), popular with retirees. It’s true that in recent years, Zhuhai has seen its share of shiny new skyscrapers, largely in the Hengqin New Area, but big picture, it’s a quiet seaside town. Except once every two years, when it goes bonkers with the China International Aviation and Aerospace Exhibition (中国国际航空航天博览会), more commonly known as the Zhuhai Airshow (珠海航展).
The Zhuhai Airshow witnesses 600,000 people descend on a city of ~2M, turning the tarmac at Jinwan Airport along with a handful of expo halls into a sea of people, airplanes, and materiel. While the majority of the Airshow is, as the name implies, aviation-focused, recent years have seen more space companies show up. And this year was, if anything, the biggest year yet for space at the Airshow.
As usual, the biggest space industry exhibitors by far were CASC and CASIC, with the two SOEs displaying a variety of rockets and satellites. From CASC, we saw most of the usual suspect Long Marches, alongside the LM-9 that looks…more than a little bit like a Starship. The main Chinese space contractor also displayed detailed models of most satellite busses (DFH-3E, -4, -5, Gaojing satellites, etc.), along with hundreds of components and subsystems including laser terminals, thermal systems, and servos. Alongside all the displays, CASC also inked an eye-watering ¥60B (nearly US$8.5B) in deals across three main sectors: aerospace, defense and aerospace technology applications, and services. To be fair, these are mostly state-run programs (deals for more Gaofen and Gaojing satellites, rockets, etc.), but still, big money.
Also unsurprisingly, the show was well-attended by Russian aerospace, space, and defense firms including NPO Energomash, who displayed their RD-180 engine.
Other Highlights from the Show
For my money, the biggest news to come from Zhuhai was a talk from SpaceSail, who gave a talk at a forum the week of the conference. For the uninitiated, SpaceSail is the operator of the Thousand Sails constellation (formerly G60), a semi-commercial Chinese version of Starlink. The slide below says it all, with the company having 6 initial target markets across South, Southeast, and Central Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America.
Beyond that, the light blue countries are targeted for expansion by 2025, with the company apparently planning to address much of the African continent by the end of next year. A tall and ambitious order for sure, and an indication of the rising international ambitions of China’s leading space companies. As we covered last week, SpaceSail already made good on their plans to enter Brazil via an MoU with state-owned Brazilian telecoms company Telebrás, signed during a meeting between two people you’ve probably heard of: Chinese President Xi Jinping and his Brazilian counterpart Lula Ignacio Lula da Silva.
Separately, we saw Galaxy Space CEO Xu Ming give a talk on the company’s technological advancement in NGSO communicatons satellites. Xu showed (not for the first time) a concept for Galaxy Space’s “Next-Gen Direct-to-Phone” satellites, which, let’s just say, bear a striking resemblance to the BlueWalker-3 satellites deployed by US-based satellite direct-to-phone company AST Space Mobile.
To now, Galaxy Space has launched 8 NGSO comms satellites across 3 generations. In theory, the company has a “Superfactory” in Nantong, Jiangsu Province, with an initially planned manufacturing capacity of 500 satellites/year. In reality, their constellation ambitions are, in all likelihood, too big to be realistic, and Galaxy Space seems to have realized this. Rather than talking up their own constellation, they have for some time been talking about their prowess in advanced communications payloads, stackable satellites, and flat, foldable solar arrays. Xu Ming’s talk at Zhuhai was no different, highlighting specific technology advancements, including showing for the first time site footage of a mobile phone user connecting directly to a Galaxy Space satellite, rather than talking about their constellation ambitions.
Outside of non-GEO communications, the Zhuhai Airshow was used as a PR platform for China’s space program more broadly. This is always the case for domestic audiences, as CASC displays all of their biggest and grandest rockets, and everyone loves rockets with their country’s flag on them.
But this year had more of an international spin, with a full diaorama of the International Lunar Research Station (ILRS) along with a row of flags of participating nations. The Chang’e-6 return capsule was also proudly displayed alongside precious Lunar samples, with all placards notably in both Chinese and English (a relatively new development in Zhuhai).
The Chinese Academy of Science joined the international theme, with their Shanghai Engineering Center for Microsatellites displaying the Sino-French SVOM satellite alongside a number of other science and technology satellites.
Conclusions from Zhuhai
The 2024 Zhuhai Airshow was all the usual stuff we’ve come to expect (CASC satellites, Russian rocket engines, and 600,000 attendees), plus a whole lot more. Commercial companies played a much more prominent role than in years’ past, with entities like SpaceSail kind of stealing the show.
At the same time, the breadth of commercial companies attending is also noteworthy. Very niche players such as Light Year Explore (maker of rocket propellant tanks) and AZSpace (commercial spacecraft) showed up in force. And of course, newish manufacturers like Genesat prominently displayed their wares.
In some ways, the 2024 Zhuhai Airshow was a microcosm of China’s space sector more broadly. The state maintains the biggest presence on stage, but hundreds of commercial companies are nipping at their heels across a variety of verticals and technologies. And while the show (and industry) remain overwhelmingly Chinese, there is clear desire by Chinese entities to engage with the outside world, and desire by certain parts of the outside world (usual suspects including, but absolutely not limited to Russia) to engage with China.
As a final aside, our man on the ground in Zhuhai got 1,200 high-res photos of just about every space booth there. Contact us for pricing details for the full set.
And in other news this month
With still a month to go, China has now bested 2023’s number of satellites launched with 218 (last year 216). This notably came on 57 launches so far in 2024, compared to 66 in 2023. November was a busy month with 27 satellites orbited, and it marks the 4th month in a row with more spacecraft sent to orbit than last year.
CAS Space sent 15 satellites into orbit on their ZK-1A rocket. With the launch, CAS Space (established in December 2018) has now sent 57 satellites into orbit, representing a cumulative mass of >5t. The highlight of the launch was a remote sensing satellite built for Oman by a consortium including (CASC subsidiary) Shenzhen Aerospace Dongfanghong and Star.Vision. Other notables included a couple of satellites for Xi’an Aerospace Investment including “China’s first high-resolution methane monitoring commercial satellite”, and 6 satellites for Yunyao Yuhang.
The Zhuque-2E (enhanced) from Landspace sent two optical comms test satellites into orbit near the end of the month. Most press releases were very coy about who built the satellites, but there were multiple different optical payloads including one from Laser Link (pictured below).
At least 10 CAST crates showed up at the Wenchang International Launch Center in Hainan, with this almost certainly an indication of an upcoming batch launch of Guowang/SatNet satellites. Recent months have seen Thousand Sails pull ahead, but with massive state backing, SatNet could roar to life at any moment.
Well-respected Chinese space industry voice and overall great guy Chen Lan published an interesting opinion piece about China’s commercial space companies going abroad. Therein, he provided some historical context on China’s international space business, while also making some interesting comparisons to EVs.
A Sino-Russian cubesat was launched from the city of Blagoveshchensk (and you think words like Wenchang are hard to pronounce!), having been jointly developed by Harbin Institute of Technology, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Amur State University, and Bauman Moscow State University.
Azerbaijani satellite operator Azercosmos announced a successful satcom test at the highest peak in Azerbaijan, Mount Bazarduzu (4,466m), using a terminal from Chinese VSAT manufacturer Starwin.
And finally, for any China Mobile subscribers reading the Monitor, the company announced free BeiDou SMS services until 31 December 2024 on all BeiDou-compatible phones including the Huawei Pura 70, Honor X60 Pro, and others. Happy satellite-based texting!
If you’ve made it this far, thanks for reading, and see you next week!
Blaine