First batch of internet satellites for Chinese constellation Guowang It was launched from Wenchang Cosmodrome on Hainan island (South China) on December 16 with the help of the Changzheng-5B heavy launch vehicle (Long March 5B). The satellites successfully entered low Earth orbit.

The probes are the first of 13,000 satellites that a consortium of Chinese companies plans to build and launch over the next decade. Guowang’s fleet will transmit high-speed, low-latency Internet signals in an architecture similar to SpaceX’s Starlink network.

The PRC has released almost no details about the design of the Guowang satellites, other than that they want to use them as broadband Internet relay stations. In August 2024, China launched into space several dozen devices of another satellite group called “Thousand Sails”.

In the first phase, there will be 1,296 devices in this group, and half of them will be withdrawn by the end of 2025. In this form, “Thousand Sails” will provide high-speed satellite internet to China. Later, a full “constellation” will be created, which will include 14 thousand devices.