China plans space traffic management system amid commercial satellite boom
National space body says it needs to keep space ‘sustainable’ as projections show number of satellites in low Earth orbit could hit 100,000
“Our calculations show that low Earth orbit could get overcrowded with about 100,000 satellites,” Meng Lingjie, director of the China National Space Administration’s (CNSA) Earth observation and data centre, told the news portal Jiemian.com last week.
“To keep space sustainable, the CNSA is working on a traffic management system to better organise satellite placement and operations. Without it, overlapping projects and repetitive competition could seriously hurt the industry’s development.”
Industry data shows that China has 58 satellite factories either operating, under construction, or in the planning stages.
Based on publicly available capacity estimates, the country’s satellite production is expected to exceed 5,000 units annually by the end of the year.
Major projects include Shanghai-based Spacecom Satellite Technology’s G60 Starlink, a communications network that will eventually have around 15,000 satellites, 648 of which should be in orbit by the end of the year.