Until recently, the Chinese space program was government run. China opened up its space exploration and exploitation to private companies in 2014. In the last few years, private companies have entered the arena in China and are pushing hard to catch up to the private space industry that is thriving in the United States. Now there are eighty commercial Chinese space-technology startups. China is hoping to snag a piece of the three hundred and fifty-billion dollar global commercial space marketplace.
Most of the eighty Chinese companies are constructing satellites and related software applications. There are ten Chinese companies who are more ambitious. They are working on the development of launch vehicles and hoping to compete with companies such as SpaceX in the U.S. for the growing global market for the launch of satellites.
Landscape Technology Corporation (LTC) was started in 2015 by Roger Zhang, a former banker with ties to major Chinese banks. He recruited a group of experienced engineers who had worked on the Long March family of rockets that are the foundation of the Chinese government space program. LTC has raised about seventy-two million dollars from private investors and city governments.
Landscape Technology Corporation had hoped to become the first Chinese company to launch a rocket into Earth orbit last month. However, its Vermillion Bird rocket was unable to successfully carry a satellite to orbit.
Zhang said that LTC needs another one hundred and fifteen million dollars of capital in order to actually start commercial operations. The LTC rocket that failed its first mission could only carry a six-hundred and sixty pound satellite to orbit. LTC is currently working on a larger and more complex launch vehicle that will be able to carry an eight thousand and eight-hundred pound satellite to orbit. This rocket will be a serious contender with SpaceX which can carry a ten-thousand pound payload into orbit.
SpaceX charges about sixty-two million dollars to launch a payload with its Falcon 9 rocket. Zhang says that the new LTC rocket will be able to carry out a launch for about fifteen million dollars. While this is considerably cheaper than the Falcon 9, the LTC rocket can only reach lower Earth orbits than the Falcon 9.
One Space, a major rival of LTC, was started with one hundred and sixteen million dollars of capital from private investors and state-owned funds. Now One Space has the opportunity to be the first private rocket to carry a satellite into orbit in late 2018. If they fail, there are more private Chinese space companies lining up for launches in 2019.
Many of the new Chinese private space companies are working on CubeSats. These are very small satellites that are based on a unit size cube about four inches on a side. These satellites are relatively cheap to build and can be launched twenty at a time in a single launch vehicle. They can be distributed in large sets to provide wide coverage for communication and GPS applications.
Beijing-based ZeroG Labs is a private Chinese space company that builds and sells CubeSats. They are able to sell a single CubeSat for about one hundred thousand dollars which is very cheap when compared to full sized satellites. Zhang Bei is the founder of ZeroG Labs. He has a background in information technology. ZeroG Labs raised about three million dollars in its first round of investment. It already has three CubeSats in Earth orbit with plans to launch one hundred and thirty-two more CubeSats by 2022. CubeSats can provide remote sensing and Earth observation services for big companies. CubeSats will open up many new opportunities for Chinese space companies.
While the Chinese started late in private commercial space companies. They are working hard to catch up with a lot of assistance from the Chinese government.