Xinhua News Agency, Beijing, April 24th Title: New Space Infrastructure: China's Commercial Space Speeds Up

　　Xinhua News Agency reporters Song Chen, Liang Jie, Meng Hanqi

　　April 24 is the tenth "China Space Day". China's commercial aerospace industry is ushering in the dual turning point of "technical breakthrough" and "scale explosion", and the space economy is moving from vision to reality.

　　Commercial aerospace generally refers to an industry that provides aerospace products and services in a market-oriented manner, covering rocket launches, satellite applications, space tourism and other fields.

　　In 2025, a number of commercial rockets and commercial satellites will be launched one after another. The once "cold" aerospace technology is now leveraging commercial power to enter thousands of households and industries, and continuously expanding application scenarios.

　　The "singularity" of commercial aerospace outbreak is coming

　　At present, the global commercial aerospace industry is growing rapidly and becoming a new focus of competition among major powers.

　　China is a rapidly rising "new star". In 2025, my country has plans to fly a number of recyclable rockets for the first time; in terms of satellites, giant constellations such as Qianfan Constellation continue to be launched, and demand for small satellites has exploded. It is estimated that the size of China's commercial aerospace market will exceed 2.5 trillion yuan this year.

　　In 2015, it was called the "first year of commercial aerospace in China" in the industry. The "National Medium- and Long-term Development Plan for Civil Space Infrastructure (2015-2025)" was issued, proposing for the first time to encourage social capital to enter the aerospace field.

　　Since then, private commercial aerospace companies such as Blue Arrow Aerospace have been established one after another, and a group of entrepreneurs have flocked to this emerging field. The "Jilin-1" satellite group developed by Changguang Satellite was successfully launched, setting a precedent for the application of commercial satellites in my country.

　　In 2024, China's commercial aerospace industry ushered in an "singularity" of explosion. For the first time, it was written into the government work report of that year as a "new growth engine". Beijing, Shanghai and other places successively issued special support policies and action plans to increase the layout of the commercial aerospace industry.

　　In Yizhuang, south of Beijing, there are more than 160 aerospace enterprises gathered, and the number of commercial rocket complete aircraft development companies accounts for 75% of the country; and in Haidian District, north of the city, there are many commercial satellite manufacturing, measurement, operation and operation companies. This two areas in the south and north have gathered more than 200 key enterprises, and core R&D units account for more than half of the country.

　　Policy is like a catalyst, activates the chain reaction of commercial forces towards the "Sea of ​​Stars". In 2024, Zhuque 3 completed a 10-kilometer vertical take-off and landing return flight test at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center; the "Yunyao Meteorological Constellation" satellites were launched one after another, and it is planned to complete the networking by the end of 2026...

　　As of now, the number of commercial aerospace companies in China has increased rapidly to more than 500, and the number of satellites in orbit has continued to rise.

　　A series of technological breakthroughs are another great thrust for the rise of commercial aerospace. The PIE-Engine Tianquan model independently developed by Aerospace Hongtu realizes intelligent interpretation, intelligent enhancement and three-dimensional reconstruction of remote sensing images; many commercial rocket companies such as Galaxy Power and Blue Arrow Aerospace have greatly improved the production efficiency and stability of engine components through 3D printing technology.

　　The report "Ideas and Paths for Commercial Aerospace Development in the 15th Five-Year Plan" released by the CADI Research Institute not long ago believes that China's entire commercial aerospace industry chain has achieved rapid development and is expected to usher in a mature period at the end of the 15th Five-Year Plan or the 16th Five-Year Plan period.

　　New application scenarios are emerging at an accelerated pace. At the Beijing Commercial Aerospace High-Quality Development Conference held in February this year, Wang Qiaochu, an employee of Beijing Yizhuang Xingjian Company, connected the mobile phone to the Galaxy Aerospace Low-orbit Internet satellite that is transiting over the sky, and sent the scene of the Beijing Rocket Street project construction back to the large screen in real time.

　　The rich application scenarios have also promoted the acceleration of commercial aerospace to new development. Yang Shaoxian, chief researcher of commercial aerospace at CIDI Research Institute, said that the era of new space infrastructure has begun, and new business forms such as "aerospace +" are in full swing. Space tourism and commercial lunar exploration are expected to achieve policy breakthroughs and move towards experimental verification or early stages of commercial operations within 5 to 10 years.

　　Ordinary people may not be far from getting close to space.

　　The era of commercial rocket recycling begins

　　In April 1990, China launched foreign satellites for the first time and entered the international commercial satellite launch market. At that time, the launch vehicle was mainly the "national team" Long March family. More than 30 years later, China's commercial rockets ushered in a "golden age" in the market.

　　The "fast response" and "low cost" commercial rockets are the "new forces" of small and medium-sized satellite launches today.

　　At around 19:00 on March 21, at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in Gansu, the Ceres One carrier rocket developed by Xinghe Power was launched, sending six satellites from the Yunyao meteorological constellation into the sun-synchronous orbit.

　　In addition to Ceres One, the gravity-1 carrier rocket in Oriental Space was successfully launched in the offshore waters of Haiyang, Shandong in January last year, breaking the global solid rocket capacity record at that time. As the world's first all-solid bundled medium-sized launch vehicle, Gravity One can support the launch of a 100-kilogram satellite "30 stars in one arrow".

　　If solid rockets are "light cavalry" in the commercial aerospace field, liquid recyclable rockets are "aircraft carriers" that support the space economy. With its advantages of large thrust, it breaks through the load limit and reduces costs through recycling and reuse. It is the core engine that kicks off the aerospace industry's scale era.

　　According to the calculations of the Blue Arrow Aerospace Team, through recycling design, the rocket engine can reduce the single launch cost from the "billion yuan level" to the "10 million yuan level", which is 70% lower than traditional one-time rockets, making the low-orbit satellite "one arrow and a hundred stars" networking and the "batch launch" of deep space probes an economically feasible commercial solution.

　　Due to the need to be recycled on the ground, the technical challenges of this rocket are greater, and can be called the "precision ballet" of aerospace engineering - through engine secondary ignition, high-precision attitude control and other technologies, the arrow bodies dozens of meters high landed smoothly like "space helicopters".

　　"The rocket needs to withstand high temperature ablation of 2000℃ when it returns to the atmosphere, rely on the engine's secondary ignition to achieve 'reverse thrust deceleration', and complete a vertical soft landing through high-precision navigation control." Ji Feng, chairman of Anhui Jiuzhou Yunjian Aerospace Technology Co., Ltd., said that the key to whether it can be recycled is the rocket engine, and it is necessary to break through the engine's deep thrust adjustment technology and engine multiple start technology. At present, the company's "Longyun" engine research and development has overcome core technologies such as startup, thermal protection materials, and arrow posture control.

　　Chinese commercial rocket companies are taking new liquid rocket engines as a breakthrough point to promote my country to become one of the few countries in the world that masters full-process recycling technology.

　　"The gradual breakthrough of liquid rocket recycling technology can be regarded as an industrial revolution in the field of commercial aerospace and is a subversion of the traditional one-time rocket launch model." In the view of Huo Liang, CEO of Deep Blue Aerospace, the core significance of this technology lies in transforming rockets from "consumables" to "durable tools" and providing low-cost "space logistics trunks" for Wanxing networking and deep space exploration missions.

　　"Satellite-making on assembly line"

　　Since the beginning of the year, new trends in commercial satellites have been reported every month, showing that China's commercial satellites have reached a new level of high-density orbit.

　　From the state's proposal to support the development of commercial satellites in 2015, to the inclusion of satellite Internet into new infrastructure in 2020, to the accelerated implementation of commercial satellite industries in various places since last year, private satellite enterprises have set off a wave of innovation.

　　The reporter recently walked into the assembly hall of Galaxy Aerospace Nantong Satellite Smart Factory located in Jiangsu Province. The assembly work is underway for the production line full of technology. Two of the satellite Internet technology test satellites successfully launched on April 1 were made here.

　　With cutting-edge technologies such as assembly robots, smart devices and digital manufacturing systems, the factory has created a complete manufacturing chain of 100 to 2,000 kg satellites. According to Zhang Bo, an intelligent manufacturing R&D engineer at the factory, the production line can meet the development capabilities of 100 to 150 medium-sized satellites per year. The development cycle of the whole satellite is shortened, and the efficiency is increased by 80%, making batch "star-making" a reality.

　　"In the field of satellite manufacturing, the advantages of low-cost and mass production of commercial aerospace companies are further highlighted. The development of satellites is changing from a small number of customized models to a large-scale production model. Being able to produce satellites like a computer has become a reality." said Zhang Shijie, chief scientist of Galaxy Aerospace.

　　New technologies have made rapid progress, and the cost of satellite building has been reduced, making the application of technology in the sky convenient for thousands of households on the ground.

　　Jia Hongguang, deputy general manager of Changguang Satellite Technology Co., Ltd., said that from single-star experiments to constellation networking, from data collection to intelligent services, commercial satellites are achieving a commercial leap from "space infrastructure" to "ecological value".

　　The city has many transportation points, long lines and wide areas, and the road network is large in scale and complex in structure. Using satellite remote sensing and artificial intelligence technology, information such as the location and shape of the road network can be quickly and accurately extracted, bringing convenience to urban road network verification.

　　In the past, when surveying the planting area, people needed to measure and calculate step by step with their feet. By obtaining vegetation index images, satellites form data information based on the proportion of light reflected by the vegetation in different bands of light, thus reflecting the growth, yield, seedling rate, etc. of crops. The 200 square kilometers of farmland can obtain the whole-region image in just half an hour.

　　Remote sensing technology has the advantages of large width, high efficiency and low cost, making primary forest monitoring possible, greatly improving monitoring efficiency, reducing work pressure, and reducing work risks.

　　Looking up at the starry sky, the 117 satellites of the "Jilin-1" constellation, while overlooking the earth, also record the growth and changes of crops in real time; the radar satellite of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area Aerospace Map scans the coastline every 6 hours, and the accuracy of the prediction of typhoon paths can reach a hundred meters...

　　Whether it is aircraft, ships, remote mining areas, or unmanned areas, in the near future, it can be further integrated with the ground communication network through satellite Internet, and gradually form a three-dimensional communication network that integrates the world and develops in a integrated manner.

　　In the sky full of stars, business wisdom shines brightly.

　　The launch site achieves a breakthrough of 0

　　If commercial rockets are compared to "aircraft" and commercial satellites are compared to "passengers", commercial space launch sites are "airports" for "passengers" to board and take off. As there are more and more "passengers" and "aircraft", it is imperative to build an "exclusive airport".

　　By the end of 2024, it is a milestone that the successful success of the first mission of Hainan Commercial Space Launch Site was a milestone. Fan Ruixiang, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and an expert from China Aerospace Science and Technology Group, commented: "It has achieved a breakthrough from scratch in my country's commercial aerospace launch sites, made up for the gap in the commercial aerospace chain, and also provided strong launch support for large-scale low-orbit constellation networking missions, etc.."

　　Yang Tianliang, chairman of Hainan International Commercial Space Launch Co., Ltd., introduced that the construction of a launch station in Wenchang has unique geographical advantages. At the same time, compared with Jiuquan, Xichang, Taiyuan and Wenchang Aerospace Launch Station, Hainan Commercial Aerospace Launch Station is the first civilian aerospace launch site. Its mission organization and management operation adopts a flexible and efficient commercial mechanism, which can better gather social innovation forces.

　　This "breaker" is effectively combining the leadership of scientific and technological innovation with the flexibility of market mechanisms to meet the needs of commercial space launches.

　　Ge Lixin, director of the Engineering Equipment Department of Hainan International Commercial Aerospace Launch Co., Ltd., introduced that the No. 2 work station that performs the first mission of the launch site adopts a "universal" interface design. The front and rear end equipment of the launch is not fixed, and can be replaced with "module" and "counter-port". 19 models of rockets such as the Long March 12 launch vehicle can be used. This station can also adapt to rockets with different types of propellant, takeoff weight, and diameter length.

　　In terms of invisible system management, the launch site is also undergoing iterative updates.

　　The overall design department of the First Academy of China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation is responsible for building the "smart brain" of Hainan commercial aerospace launch site. Xu Wenxiao, an expert in the overall design department of the institute, introduced that this system mainly includes five major systems such as communication system and meteorological system and 26 sub-systems, and has functions such as command and monitoring, digital twins, digital flight companion, health management, and comprehensive operation and maintenance, realizing information interconnection, integration and sharing, making the launch process efficient and intelligent.

　　The maritime launch site has also been favored by commercial rocket companies in recent years.

　　Bu Xiangwei, co-CEO of Oriental Space and chief designer of the Gravity Series launch vehicle, said that the sea launch field can flexibly choose the latitude. Compared with the "fixed" inland launch field, it can be moved to a suitable position for launch, thereby fully leveraging the inherent carrying capacity of the launch vehicle.

　　Some industry insiders analyzed that the maritime launch site not only marks that China's commercial aerospace is moving from the "land-based" era to a new field of "land-based" field, but is also building a cross-border ecosystem of "aerospace + ocean" and opening up a new space for the integration of the aerospace industry and the ocean economy.

　　Above the sky, the brilliant constellation composed of commercial satellites is a "cosmic love letter" written by the Chinese people with a thousand-year-old romantic dream of flying. This is the golden age of China's aerospace industry and a march for human exploration into the universe.

[Editor in charge: Chen Tingyu]