The powerful satellite will provide Internet communications as well as 5G in China and regions included in the Chinese Belt and Road project.
On Thursday, February 29, China launched a high-orbit wireless internet satellite into space from the Xichang launch center in the southwestern province of Sichuan. This was reported by the Chinese news agency Xinhua.
The Long March-3B launch vehicle, launched at 21:03 local time (15:03 Kiev time), launched the satellite into low Earth orbit.
SpaceNews reports that we are talking about the high-orbit satellite Internet-01 (Weixing Hulianwan Gaogui-01), developed by the China Academy of Space Technology (CAST).
The new satellite is China’s next step in developing infrastructure in space. It is designed to maintain communication over long distances and improve the quality of telecommunication services. The satellite will be used to provide coverage throughout the country and in the most important areas along the Belt and Road project route.
The satellite will play an important role in developing 5G communications and supporting research missions in space.
China has a number of geostationary communications satellites called ChinaSat (Zhongxing) and a year ago launched the first high-speed Internet satellite, ChinaSat-26, providing data connectivity of more than 100 Gbps.
Let us remind you that China’s G60 satellite constellation can compete with Starlink. PRC is developing two mega constellations of 12 thousand and 13 thousand satellites, and is also building a facility where they will produce 1 satellite for a day and a half. It is planned to start production at a scale that will enable real competition with Starlink by 2027. Production capacity will be 300 satellites per year. Thanks to broadcasting, satellite construction time will be reduced from 2-3 months to one and a half days. But this still will not allow comparison with Starlink: American SpaceX produces 6 satellites per day, so the constellation in orbit will grow more slowly.
Source: Focus
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