China expands presence in Space, to send 138 spacecraft into orbit by 2025

A satellite manufacturer and operator with headquarters in Changchun, CGST has planned to send 138 spacecraft into orbit by 2025. On the other hand, it is now common knowledge that the launch of this number of satellites is the first step in a process that will be finished in the year 2023. The second phase of the constellation expansion will begin in 2025 and involve adding 300 satellites. Jilin 1 spacecraft weighing only about 45 kg belong to the category of microsatellites.

The Chinese Academy of Sciences’ State Changchun Institute of Optics, Fine Mechanics, and Physics established the China Geospatial-Intelligence Satellite Telescope (CGST) in 2014 as an extension of its work in the field of remote sensing. In November 2020, the company secured US$375 million for the Jilin-1 project. The CGST constellation is the largest Chinese commercial satellite network operating in space. As a result of the decision made in 2014 about private equity, the manufacturer has evolved into one of the well-funded commercial enterprises to have emerged in China.

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Jilin-1 project

The Jilin-1 satellites can transmit panchromatic images with a resolution ranging from 0.50 to 0.75 metres. The remaining satellites in the constellation are all equipped with video recording capabilities and multispectral, multifunctional, and infrared capabilities, respectively. The Chinese company HEAD Aerospace is handling the commercialization of the informational assets that the project has created.

There are currently 70 satellites in orbit, 10 of which are Jilin-1 Gaofeng 03D optical satellites. These satellites are planned to provide a resolution of 0.75 metres from an altitude of around 535 kilometres. Yunyao Aerospace is responsible for developing the six satellites known as “Jilin-1 Hongwei 1,” which are capable of producing infrared imagery.

CGST successfully launched eight Jilin-1 satellites in May 2022. Each of these satellites can keep a position above any area on Earth between 17 and 20 times each day. The company asserts that it uses the constellation for objectives related to agriculture and forestry, the protection of the environment, maritime observation, urban construction, and scientific study.

China teaches its satellites to track single targets

A sophisticated artificial intelligence system built by the Chinese military might turn low-cost satellites already circling the Earth into espionage platforms capable of tracking moving objects the size of vehicles with a high level of precision.

The Chinese team claimed that the new artificial intelligence technology they developed could accurately locate things the size of cars with 95 per cent accuracy. The Jilin-1 satellite has developed the ability to broadcast video of a variety of moving tiny targets, such as cars driving down the road and aeroplanes flying across the sky.

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According to Lin Congbao and the other researchers who worked on the project with him, the rate of success was almost seven times higher than that of currently available technology.

In the most recent iteration of the AI, when a target became briefly inaccessible, the AI would make an educated guess as to where the target might be based on its prior experiences and then continue following the target along the path it believed the target was most likely to travel.

According to Lin’s research, the majority of the time, artificial intelligence was able to spot the target as soon as it resurfaced.

Photographing the ISS

Weibo, a Chinese microblogging service, uploaded a picture to its website on September 8, 2018, and the remote sensing satellite Jilin-1 captured that. In the image, the outline of the International Space Station could be made out. The photograph was taken by a satellite that is orbiting the sun at a sun-synchronous distance of 656 kilometres. The orbit of the ISS is at the height of 400 kilometres.

The satellite then filmed the test of the OS-X1 suborbital rocket, built by the Chinese company OneSpace.

China’s Starlinks

The extension of the Jilin-1 constellation is China’s retaliation for using the SpaceX Starlink constellation for military operations in Ukraine. According to representatives of the Chinese army, Maxar and BlackSky provided satellite footage demonstrating the deployment of Russian troops near the border with Ukraine. The military of the People’s Republic of China has accused the United States of eroding the boundaries between the military and civilian spheres to attain space domination by engaging commercial businesses and the general public in a space arms race.

Reports in the public domain quote General David Thompson, the Deputy Commander of US Space Operations, as saying that the United States would increase financing for the industry to compete with China’s rapid technological advancements in space. According to Thompson, around 260 image satellites and approximately 50 navigational vehicles had been launched by China over the previous five years.