China Opens Its Ambitious Space Program To Private Space Companies

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China opens its ambitious space program to private space companies, permitting Chinese businessmen to probe their performance in direct competition with the billionaires of the US space companies such as SpaceX and Blue Origin, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, respectively.

Some of the Chinese private space companies, such as OneSpace and LandSpace, are already working in rocket launches. But, in addition to them, the Asian country bets on a higher number of lesser-known firms that produce small satellites, such as Spacety, Zhuhai Orbita and Galaxy Space, and launch them frequently to gather data and images from the Earth’s orbit.

China is also starting to challenge mini satellite manufacturers in the US, Japan, and Germany. Many private space companies in the Asian country are competing for a place in the world’ satellite industry, which is currently valued at about $269 billion. The Asian projects attract investments from venture capital funds operated by giant tech companies such as Lenovo and Xiaomi.

China Opens Its Ambitious Space Program To Private Space Companies And Could Dominate The Satellite Industry Soon

“If China can put its industrial capacity on small satellites as it does on global consumer electronics, in a few years it could be the dominant satellite manufacturer,” said John Holst from the Space Foundation, an organization headquartered in Colorado Springs.

Back in 2014, the Chinese President Xi Jinping gave the green light to private businesses to contribute in the space industry to carry out the development of high-tech space-related sectors to come up with sophisticated semiconductors, artificial intelligence, and better small satellites technologies.

At the time being, there are about 60 Chinese private space companies that operate in the commercial space industry, as reported by Blaine Curcio, the CEO of the Hong-Kong-based Orbital Gateway Consulting firm. However, China’s government is still dominating the Chinese space program and allocates about $8 billion annually. That’s a figure only surpassed by NASA.

Vadim Ioan Caraiman

Vadim is a passionate writer on various topics but especially on stuff related to health, technology, and science. Therefore, for Great Lakes Ledger, Vadim will cover health and Sci&Tech news.