Private players make their mark with space missions(6)

Satellite technologies

Private players have also come of age in the satellite field to become a flourishing seedbed for technological innovation and creativity.

GalaxySpace, a leading private satellite maker, built China's first satellite equipped with a flexible solar array and deployed it into space in July.

The satellite, Lingxi 03, is a plate-shaped communications satellite. It has a millimeter-wave multibeam digital payload, which features a transmission capacity of tens of gigabits per second.

Zhang Shijie, a senior spacecraft researcher and GalaxySpace's chief scientist, said the satellite's main task is to verify a next-generation low-Earth-orbit broadband communication system and other satellite technologies, including an ultra-large energy system and active thermal control.

He said the Lingxi 03's flexible solar wing is a major technological feat, because such apparatus has proved through the construction of massive satellite networks by foreign companies to be crucial in establishing an internet satellite system.

"The solar wing has been working well and the results of its trial run were better than we expected," Zhang said.