How tiny satellites are helping China in the space race
- Millennial’s start-up, Spacety, is one of the firms jumping in as Beijing opens its ambitious programme to private enterprise
A space race known for giant rockets and billion-dollar exploration vehicles is shrinking to the size of a Cheerios box, and that is opening a launch window for entrepreneurs like Chinese millennial Yang Feng.
Yang’s start-up, Spacety, builds microsatellites and then has them shot into orbit, offering to provide Wi-fi service on planes or eyes into the furthest reaches of space – at prices starting around US$16,000.
“There are so many niche markets for satellites,” Yang, the 36-year-old chief executive officer, said in his office at a Chinese Academy of Sciences complex in Beijing, with one of his machines sitting on the table in front of him. “I want to do low Earth orbit satellites in the areas that state-owned enterprises are too big to reach.”
China is deliberately opening its ambitious and secretive space programme to private enterprise, spawning home-grown rocketeers One Space Technology and Landspace Technology to compete with similar efforts by billionaires Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos.
There is also a blossoming of lesser-known businesses that make small satellites – some weighing less than 1.4kg (3 pounds) – to put atop those rockets. Spacety, Zhuhai Orbita Aerospace Science and Technology and Beijing Galaxy Space Internet Technology routinely send imaging and data-collecting machines into orbit as they compete for pieces of a global satellite industry worth US$269 billion.