China's Mars rover named Zhurong, Updates from China Space Day, Satellite Laser Communications, Tianbing Rockets - Ep 30

Dongfang Hour - the China Space Podcast

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Dongfang Hour China Aero/Space News Roundup! Without further ado, the news update from the week of 19 - 25 April.
1) The 6th China Space Day took place in Nanjing on Saturday April 24
Happy China Space Day everyone! This Saturday, China kicked off its 6th China Space Day, an annual celebration promoting China’s space heritage and future space programs. China Space Day is not actually one event, but actually hundreds of events all around the country, with many institutes, universities, and schools organizing space outreach events. This includes conferences, presentations, exhibitions, etc.
It’s also worth noting that among all the space events taking place in China, there is one big official event where all the space industry creme-de-la-creme get together, and which last two days. Every year CSD takes place in a different city, and this year it took place in Nanjing, the capital of Jiangsu province. Speeches were delivered by Zhang Kejian (director of the CNSA), Wu Zhenglong (governor or Jiangsu), Han Liming (Secretary of the Nanjing Communist Party).
Finally, we saw an announcement of the name of China’s Mars rover, which is currently on-board the Tianwen-1 spacecraft in orbit around Mars, and which is supposed to land sometime in May. Among the ten names that were shortlisted by Chinese netizens, the name Zhurong (祝融) was officially announced by Wu Yanhua, the deputy director of CNSA. Zhurong is a god of fire in Chinese mythology.
2) ChinaSat Made Some Big Statements about China’s Constellation Plans
ChinaSat President Ge Yujin made some very interesting comments at an annual shareholders meeting for the company, as reported by Satellite World (卫星界) on Monday. The most interesting line was a reply to a question about Hongyan, namely a reporter pointing out that Hongyan was originally planned for completion in 2020, and asking for a status update.
Mr. Ge replied by pointing out that Hongyan was originally launched in 2018, and that it has since, along with CASIC’s Hongyun, come under national constellation system plan, with Hongyan understood to be undergoing major changes.
3) Spacety and Intane Optics complete China’s first private satellite-ground laser comms experiment
Two Chinese private companies, Spacety (a satellite manufacturer) and Intane Optics (optics subsystem manufacturer) announced in a press release on April 4th that they had achieved China’s first private laser satellite-ground comms. This satellite-ground laser comms experiment was done with the Beihangsat-1, a Spacety cubesat launched in November 2020 which was essentially a test satellite for space-based ADS-B, but it also carried the SG10-1 optical payload manufactured by Intane. The optical ground station was also provided by Intane, based in Nanjing.
4) Tianbing Aerospace Announces an Intelligent Rocket Manufacturing Base in Suzhou
Tianbing Aerospace, aka Space Pioneer, held a signing ceremony this week for an “Intelligent Rocket Manufacturing Base” in Zhangjiagang, Suzhou. The manufacturing base includes a total investment of RMB 4B, and aims at a capacity of 30 liquid rockets and 300 engines per year, with an estimated completion date of 2022. A few other interesting nuggets of info from the article: Tianbing Aerospace plans to launch its first Tianlong-1 liquid carrier rocket by the end of 2021, which, according to the exhibition shown at the signing ceremony, would make Tianbing the first medium-sized liquid-fueled rocket in China. Tianbing also claims to have pre-sold 10 rockets so far, and plans to begin batch manufacturing its rockets by next year. The company plans to IPO before the end of 2023.
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