China Aero & Space Weekly News Round-Up - Episode 5, CCAF 2020 Special Edition (Part 2 of 2)
This week's updates include: 0:00 Welcome and news summary 0:52 CCAF Update Part 2/2 8:55 CAS Space updates 11:10 EO updates 18:05 EO investment article 20:55 Yaogan launch 22:40 Tianqi constellation update 26:15 Industrial IoT forum https://youtu.be/phmoKOppkDU 6th China Commercial Aerospace Forum Summary (part 2/2): non-CASIC companies 1) iSpace: One of the leading private launch companies in China, iSpace was founded in 2015 and has since completed one orbital launch. At the CCAF, company VP Huo Jia discussed their plans for Hyperbola-2 & post-Hyperbola-2 projects: - Hyperbola-2: 100 km hopping experiments to test the landing/engine throttling/control capabilities by end of 2020; and then full orbital test of Hyperbola-2 if hopping tests are conclusive. - Hyperbola-3: a medium lift rocket, which can be turned to heavy lift with 2 or 4 side boosters. Development of the Jiaodian-2 heavy thrust methalox engine (100 tons thrust). - Other: nice infographic of rocket family. Cool animation of what Hyperbola-2 landing would look like. - We note that iSpace is, similarly to Landspace, raising their ambitions towards the Hyperbola-2 and Hyperbola-3, as opposed to the Hyperbola-1. This is likely an indication of iSpace not wanting to compete directly with Expace. 2) Zhongke Aerospace (aka CAS Space): technical discussion on launch vehicle control, also gave some interesting indications of their ZK rocket family timeline: first launch of ZK-1 in september 2021. The payload will be a space sciences satellite built by CAS. This is not surprising given the number of satellites that the CAS launches in a given year. 3) EO companies with an increasing vertical approach to the industry: A number of EO companies have seen major traction over the past several years, and several of them spoke at the CCAF. Companies include: - PIESat (data analytics, reaching out also to EO acquisition with drones and SAR satellites) - Zhuhai Orbita (Zhuhai-1 constellation but with downstream analytics services) - Qiansheng Exploration (EO + narrowband constellation, with downstream analytics services). - Aerospace Titan (a CASIC company), doing EO analytics. Several EO companies are vertically integrating across different parts of the value chain. 4) Related to EO, pretty good article published this week by Satellite & Network (卫星与网络) about investment into the EO sector. It mentions that the ‘midstream’ services in EO are most popular for private investment, partly because compared to the other two main types of space applications (comms and satnav), EO is “more open to commercial enterprise and with stronger commercial flexibility”. https://bit.ly/324njiY Non-CCAF news 5) Yaogan launch: a group of 3x Yaogan satellites were launched from Xichang earlier this week. Yaogan is one of China’s largest EO initiatives, with the satellites believed to be focused on military applications. Excellent summary of Yaogan was written ~3 years ago, and updated ~1 year ago, available here: https://bit.ly/327awMW 6) Piggy backing the Yaogan launch was the Tianqi-6 satellite of the Guodian Gaoke IoT constellation. Tianqi constellation to have 38 satellites and to be completed before the end of 2021. 6 satellites in orbit at the moment. Xinhua article: https://bit.ly/3jP9gDZ Other Conferences 7) China Satellite Conference: The conference was standing room only, with a sold-out house at the Nikko Hotel in Beijing. Interesting takeaway was the sub-forum on Satellite 5G and 6G, which included CETC and could be an indication of CETC trying to push more into space as a way of expanding their business. https://bit.ly/2JnhJ4J 8) China Industrial IoT + 5G Forum Wuhan: at the forum, MIIT discussed the idea of industrial IoT + 5G. A related article mentioned that in China, there have been more than 800 “Industrial IoT + 5G” projects commenced thus far, with a total investment of RMB 3.4 billion. https://bit.ly/3kPVXoh This has been another episode of the Dongfang Hour China Aero/Space News Roundup. If you’ve made it this far, we thank you for your kind attention, and look forward to seeing you next time! --------------------------------------------- Follow us on YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter (https://twitter.com/DongFangHour), as an audio podcast, and on our official website: https://www.dongfanghour.com/
This week's updates include: 0:00 Welcome and news summary 0:52 CCAF Update Part 2/2 8:55 CAS Space updates 11:10 EO updates 18:05 EO investment article 20:55 Yaogan launch 22:40 Tianqi constellation update 26:15 Industrial IoT forum https://youtu.be/phmoKOppkDU 6th China Commercial Aerospace Forum Summary (part 2/2): non-CASIC companies 1) iSpace: One of the leading private launch companies in China, iSpace was founded in 2015 and has since completed one orbital launch. At the CCAF, company VP Huo Jia discussed their plans for Hyperbola-2 & post-Hyperbola-2 projects: - Hyperbola-2: 100 km hopping experiments to test the landing/engine throttling/control capabilities by end of 2020; and then full orbital test of Hyperbola-2 if hopping tests are conclusive. - Hyperbola-3: a medium lift rocket, which can be turned to heavy lift with 2 or 4 side boosters. Development of the Jiaodian-2 heavy thrust methalox engine (100 tons thrust). - Other: nice infographic of rocket family. Cool animation of what Hyperbola-2 landing would look like. - We note that iSpace is, similarly to Landspace, raising their ambitions towards the Hyperbola-2 and Hyperbola-3, as opposed to the Hyperbola-1. This is likely an indication of iSpace not wanting to compete directly with Expace. 2) Zhongke Aerospace (aka CAS Space): technical discussion on launch vehicle control, also gave some interesting indications of their ZK rocket family timeline: first launch of ZK-1 in september 2021. The payload will be a space sciences satellite built by CAS. This is not surprising given the number of satellites that the CAS launches in a given year. 3) EO companies with an increasing vertical approach to the industry: A number of EO companies have seen major traction over the past several years, and several of them spoke at the CCAF. Companies include: - PIESat (data analytics, reaching out also to EO acquisition with drones and SAR satellites) - Zhuhai Orbita (Zhuhai-1 constellation but with downstream analytics services) - Qiansheng Exploration (EO + narrowband constellation, with downstream analytics services). - Aerospace Titan (a CASIC company), doing EO analytics. Several EO companies are vertically integrating across different parts of the value chain. 4) Related to EO, pretty good article published this week by Satellite & Network (卫星与网络) about investment into the EO sector. It mentions that the ‘midstream’ services in EO are most popular for private investment, partly because compared to the other two main types of space applications (comms and satnav), EO is “more open to commercial enterprise and with stronger commercial flexibility”. https://bit.ly/324njiY Non-CCAF news 5) Yaogan launch: a group of 3x Yaogan satellites were launched from Xichang earlier this week. Yaogan is one of China’s largest EO initiatives, with the satellites believed to be focused on military applications. Excellent summary of Yaogan was written ~3 years ago, and updated ~1 year ago, available here: https://bit.ly/327awMW 6) Piggy backing the Yaogan launch was the Tianqi-6 satellite of the Guodian Gaoke IoT constellation. Tianqi constellation to have 38 satellites and to be completed before the end of 2021. 6 satellites in orbit at the moment. Xinhua article: https://bit.ly/3jP9gDZ Other Conferences 7) China Satellite Conference: The conference was standing room only, with a sold-out house at the Nikko Hotel in Beijing. Interesting takeaway was the sub-forum on Satellite 5G and 6G, which included CETC and could be an indication of CETC trying to push more into space as a way of expanding their business. https://bit.ly/2JnhJ4J 8) China Industrial IoT + 5G Forum Wuhan: at the forum, MIIT discussed the idea of industrial IoT + 5G. A related article mentioned that in China, there have been more than 800 “Industrial IoT + 5G” projects commenced thus far, with a total investment of RMB 3.4 billion. https://bit.ly/3kPVXoh This has been another episode of the Dongfang Hour China Aero/Space News Roundup. If you’ve made it this far, we thank you for your kind attention, and look forward to seeing you next time! --------------------------------------------- Follow us on YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter (https://twitter.com/DongFangHour), as an audio podcast, and on our official website: https://www.dongfanghour.com/