China Just Applied To Launch 200,000 Satellites, Over Ten Times More Than Even Exist Right Now

A Chinese space institute has filed to launch some satellites into orbit. And by "some," I mean nearly 200,000 total, which would be over ten times more than are in orbit today. Specifically, the Institute of Radio Spectrum Utilisation and Technological Innovation is hoping to launch two constellations of exactly 96,714 satellites each. That application has gone to the UN's International Telecommunication Union (ITU), which is responsible for ensuring that one country's satellites don't broadcast on the same frequencies as another's. There's, uh, going to be a lot of work to do approving an application of that size.

What exactly is China up to here? As the New Scientist points out, reach may be exceeding grasp by quite a ways. Last year, the country launched 92 rockets into space, a personal best for the nation. But SpaceX launched a record-breaking 165, and keep in mind that the company's own Starlink constellation has only gotten 10,000 satellites into orbit. That's an honestly breathtaking number... one that China is now trying to beat 20 times over. And given the way that ITU approval works, it would only have 14 years to get all 200,000 into orbit, including milestone targets along the way: one satellite for each constellation would have to get up in seven years, then 10,000 each in another two years, 50,000 each three years after that, before getting the full 100,000 each two years after that. Good luck with that!

Likely, what China is actually doing here is just reserving a bunch of communications spectrum and orbital 'turf' now and then figuring out what to do with it later. Maybe it only gets 20,000 satellites into orbit over the next 14 years, or maybe it's 30,000, but either way it's gotten approval that covers it. It might even be an attempt to see if it can box out competitors by seizing a bunch of spectrum all for itself, although it's not clear that this would work. China could just be poking around to see how it can manipulate the process to its advantage, who knows.

Of course, China is merely playing catch-up with the true power in space: Rwanda. Yes, as the New Scientist pointed out, the tiny African nation applied for no less than 327,000 satellites back in 2021. The result of this power play has been... not much. The rest of the world has just continued launching their own constellations just fine, and Rwanda itself hasn't deployed very many satellites. So China might just be making noise to look big without having much of an actual impact.

What this all indicates is that Earth orbit is getting more and more congested at a rapid pace, and in this unprecedented situation, space companies and agencies are trying lots of new ideas. Some of them may never materialize, but every once in a while, some of them probably will. It won't be long until the night (and day!) sky is covered with satellites, which will be a whole new world for us here on Earth.