China aims to launch nearly 13,000 satellites to ‘suppress’ Elon Musk’s Starlink, researchers say

Name: China’s Shenzhou 15 astronaut crew complete their first spacewalk
Uploaded: 2023-02-24T12:00:11.000Z
Duration: 2 min 19 s
Description: China’s Shenzhou 15 astronaut crew complete their first spacewalk

The satellite constellation is likely to be launched quickly to prevent SpaceX from hogging ‘low-orbit resources’, according to PLA space scientists

The project, code-named ‘GW’, would provide internet services and could be used to spy on rival networks and carry out anti-Starlink missions, paper says

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Starlink aims to put 40,000 satellites into orbit – too many for China’s surveillance and defence capacity to deal with, researchers say. Photo: Shutterstock

Stephen Chenin Beijing

Published: 8:00pm, 24 Feb 2023

Researchers say China plans to build a huge satellite network in near-Earth orbit to provide internet services to users around the world – and to stifle Elon Musk’s Starlink.

The project has the code name “GW”, according to a team led by associate professor Xu Can with the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) Space Engineering University in Beijing. But what these letters stand for is unclear.

The GW constellation will include 12,992 satellites owned by the newly established China Satellite Network Group Co, Xu and his colleagues said in a paper about anti-Starlink measures published in the Chinese journal Command Control and Simulation on February 15.

The launch schedule for these satellites remains unknown, but the number would rival the scale of SpaceX’s planned network of more than 12,000 satellites by 2027.

Xu’s team said the GW satellite constellation was likely to be deployed quickly, “before the completion of Starlink”. This would “ensure that our country has a place in low orbit and prevent the Starlink constellation from excessively pre-empting low-orbit resources”, they wrote.

The Chinese satellites could also be placed in “orbits where the Starlink constellation has not yet reached”, the researchers said, adding that they would “gain opportunities and advantages at other orbital altitudes, and even suppress Starlink”.

The Chinese satellites could be equipped with an anti-Starlink payload to carry out various missions, such as conducting “close-range, long-term surveillance of Starlink satellites”, they said.

02:19

China’s Shenzhou 15 astronaut crew complete their first spacewalk

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