Billionaire Elon Musk’s satellite communications company Starlink is facing increasing competition from rivals, including the Chinese state-backed Spacesail.
In November 2024, Shanghai-based SpaceSail signed an agreement to enter Brazil and announced it was in talks with over 30 countries. Two months later, it began work in Kazakhstan, according to the Kazakh embassy in Beijing.
READ: Elon Musk’s SpaceX eyes $350 billion valuation, could surpass ByteDance (December 3, 2024)
According to Chinese sources, Musk’s primacy in space with SpaceX and Starlink, is seen as a threat by Beijing, which is both investing heavily in rivals and funding military research into tools that track satellite constellations.
China launched a record 263 LEO satellites in 2024, according to data from astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell analyzed by tech consultancy Analysys Mason. SpaceSail has plans for launches that would comprise the Qianfan, or “Thousand Sails,” constellation, marking China’s first international push into satellite broadband. Three other Chinese constellations are also in development, with Beijing planning to launch 43,000 LEO satellites in the coming decades and investing in rockets that can carry multiple satellites.
“The endgame is to occupy as many orbital slots as possible,” said Chaitanya Giri, a space technology expert at India’s Observer Research Foundation. Some Western policymakers view this as a threat, fearing it could extend the reach of Beijing’s censorship.
READ: Sunita Williams grows romaine lettuce on International Space Station (December 6, 2024)
Researchers at the American Foreign Policy Council think-tank said in a February paper that Washington should increase cooperation with Global South nations if it wanted to “seriously contest China’s growing foray into digital dominance.”
In addition, Starlink is also facing rivalry from a service financed by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. Like Starlink, Project Kuiper aims to offer high-speed internet access from the skies for hundreds of millions of people. Like with SpaceSail, Brazil is in talks with Bezos’s Project Kuiper internet service, and Canada’s Telesat (TSAT.TO) also opens new tab, according to a Brazilian official involved in the negotiations.