A company controlled by one of China\u2019s top carmakers just put its first satellites into space.<\/p>\n
But Geespace, a unit of China\u2019s Geely automotive empire, says its ambitions are more modest than Elon Musk\u2019s plans for Space Exploration Technologies Corp.<\/p>\n
Nine of the Zhejiang Geely Holding Group Co. subsidiary\u2019s satellites began circling the planet last week after being placed in orbit by a Chinese government rocket.<\/p>\n
That makes it one of the first Chinese companies to begin assembling the sort of satellite constellations pioneered by Musk\u2019s SpaceX, which already has more than 2,000 in orbit.<\/p>\n
\u201cBoth of us have a car-manufacturing background and we hope aerospace technology and satellites can feed back to car manufacturing and travel,\u201d Geespace Chief Executive Officer Tony Wang said in an interview Tuesday. \u201cThe difference is our goals in making satellites.\u201d<\/p>\n
SpaceX is sending its\u00a0Starlink satellites<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0into orbit to build an internet-service constellation to work as a low-cost alternative to remote land-based systems that are vulnerable to interruption.<\/p>\n The Hawthorne, California-based company also launches rockets for global satellite operators, the U.S. military and NASA.<\/p>\n Headquartered in Shanghai, Geespace has more modest ambitions, with plans to deploy a much smaller network to help Geely and other companies access and transmit data for autonomous driving.<\/p>\n Geespace expects to have 72 satellites by the end of 2025, Wang said, and 168 by the end of the decade.<\/p>\n \u201cWe want to provide users with the ultimate travel experience while SpaceX focuses more on access to low-latency broadband to provide high-speed broadband access for 7 billion people in the world,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Geely owns several car brands in China as well as Sweden-based Volvo Car AB, electric-vehicle maker Polestar and British carmaker Group Lotus Plc.<\/p>\n The group\u2019s billionaire founder and chairman Li Shufu also owns nearly 10% of Mercedes-Benz Group AG.<\/p>\n The Geespace launch comes at a time when China is ramping up efforts to\u00a0compete with the US<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0to be a space power.<\/p>\n China\u2019s space agency has several missions planned this year to complete work on Tiangong, a space station that Beijing first started after the US prevented it from taking part in the International Space Station.<\/p>\n A Chinese spacecraft carrying three astronauts took off for a\u00a0mission<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0to work on Tiangong on June 5.<\/p>\n Geespace is following the lead of Chinese rival GalaxySpace, which had six satellites\u00a0enter orbit<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>in March. Weighing an average of 190 kilograms (420 pounds), those were China\u2019s first entrants in efforts to develop constellations in low-Earth orbit, state media reported.<\/p>\n \u201cChina\u2019s constellation is small compared with Starlink,\u201d the\u00a0Global Times<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0newspaper said in a report on the launch, adding that the country \u201cis ramping up efforts to promote the application and transfer of space technology in the next five years.\u201d<\/p>\n Geespace intends on doing its part, making its network open to other brands, about which more information will be revealed within three months, Wang said.<\/p>\n \u201cGeely\u2019s future collaboration partners will not be limited to Geely\u2019s ecosystems and car brands,\u201d he said. \u201cWe are also building up partnerships with other industries.\u201d<\/p>\n A company controlled by one of China\u2019s top carmakers just put its first satellites into space.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341034,"featured_media":447852,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[31750],"tags":[56194,78922,78924,61330,11375,48987],"class_list":["post-447844","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science","tag-geely","tag-geespace","tag-low-earth-orbit-leo-satellites","tag-satellites","tag-spacex","tag-starlink"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/447844"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341034"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=447844"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/447844\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/447852"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=447844"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=447844"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=447844"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Now read: Starlink map shows huge \u201cdead zone\u201d in South Africa \u2014 what it could mean<\/a><\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"