Science & technology | A thousand sails
Why China is building a Starlink system of its own
When it is finished, Qianfan could number 14,000 satellites
ON December 5th a Long March 6a rocket blasted off from Taiyuan Satellite Centre, in Shanxi province in northern China. Aboard was the third batch of satellites for the Qianfan, or “SpaceSail” network, which aims to deploy a “mega-constellation” of thousands of satellites to beam fast internet access to users anywhere in the world.
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