Upcoming Launch of Hangsheng-1, Starwin Tests Phased Array Antenna, CASICloud Funding Round - Ep 25

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Dongfang Hour China Aero/Space News Roundup! Without further ado, the news update from the week of 15 - 21 March.

0:00 Welcome and news summary
1:17 Hangsheng Satellite Launch
8:37 Starin Ka-band antenna test
17:45 CASICloud funding round

1) Some news from Hangsheng Satellite, including an upcoming launch next month
The Changsha Evening News published an interesting update on Changsha-based satellite company Hangsheng Satellite. The company was founded as early as 2015. The company is focused on making small satellites as well as satellite subsystems. It seems that the actual smallsat manufacturing business unit is picking up momentum. In the Changsha Evening News report, the journalist visited Hangsheng’s facilities where final testing procedures were being done on Hangsheng-1, a 37 kg cubesat which is scheduled for launch next month according to the report. The satellite will carry multiple scientific and technical experimental payloads, including a remote sensing payload.
https://bit.ly/2OMza20

2) Starwin Completes Testing of Ka-band Phased Array Antenna
Starwin, one of the more innovative Chinese ground terminal manufacturers, announced a test in partnership with ChinaSat for a Ka-band electronically-steered phased-array antenna. This comes about a week after the company released a promo for its Ku/Ka-band electronically-steered phased array antenna.
In a more general sense, Starwin is a company in an interesting position. Over the past 5-10 years, the global satellite communications market has seen major changes, most notably the adoption of “high-throughput satellites” (HTS), a type of satellite that offers much more capacity than traditional satellites: typically 10x, sometimes 100x, at a price that is not much more than a regular satellite (indeed, it can be less, and regardless, we are talking about a reduction in CAPEX per Gbps of 10x easily). This huge decrease in CAPEX cost has led to a corresponding decrease in satellite capacity, which has enabled a host of new applications, namely things like mobile broadband (vehicles, ships, airplanes), village Wi-Fi (i.e. places that are far away from fiber, in remote areas), and in wealthier countries, consumer broadband.

This brings us back to the Chinese satcom market, and Starwin. China’s satcom market has historically lagged behind the rest of the world technologically, to some extent. This has been for two reasons, namely 1) excellent terrestrial infrastructure has limited the need for lots of satellite capacity, and 2) ChinaSat has been in a pretty comfortable position as the market monopolist, or at best duopolist. This is not necessarily limited to China and ChinaSat--operators like JSAT (Japan) and KTSAT (South Korea) have been comparatively slow in procuring HTS for similar reasons. But digressing, the Chinese market has been slow to roll out HTS, but this is changing, with ChinaSat having launched its first HTS in 2016 (ChinaSat-16), and a second in 2019 that failed (ChinaSat-18). We now have Apstar-6D, a large HTS operated by Mainland Chinese operator APT Mobile Satcom, and we have several HTS orders for ChinaSat.
https://bit.ly/313rElD

3) CASICloud announces an RMB 2.63 billion round of funding
CASIC’s industrial internet subsidiary CASICloud, announced that it has raised 2.63 billion RMB in a new round of funding on March 18.
While not directly linked to the space industry, there are several reasons why this update is interesting.
Firstly, it’s worth noting that CASICloud is one of the large scale commercial initiatives of CASIC in 2015, and CASIC being a very traditional SoE who’s historical business is the defence sector. Why enter the cloud and industrial internet business, when there are huge domestic players such as Tencent Cloud or AliCloud already? CASIC’s launch of CASICloud coincides with the period when the 10-year Made in China 2025 plan was unveiled, and which aims among other things at making China a leader in 10 target industries. CASICloud can be seen as an implementation of the MIC2025 policy. CASICloud competitors’ Tencent Cloud and AliCloud being privately owned companies, it may seem to make sense to also have an SoE play a role in a business that is considered strategic by the central government.
https://bit.ly/3c4uRb4

This has been another episode of the Dongfang Hour China Aero/Space News Roundup. We look forward to seeing you next time!

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