Recently, the intensive launch of the “GW” constellation has attracted widespread attention to the satellite Internet industry. While we are pleased with the launch progress of the “GW” constellation, the situation of my country’s other 10,000-satellite constellation project is not optimistic. According to Shanghai Yuanxin\u2019s original plan, the Qianfan Constellation project is divided into three phases. The first phase is to send 648 satellites into predetermined orbits to achieve regional network coverage centered on China; the second phase is to send 648 satellites into predetermined orbits, bringing the total number of satellites to 1,296, to achieve global network coverage; the third phase is to complete the networking of 15,000 satellites to achieve global network coverage while providing diversified business services. The corresponding time nodes are: launching 108 satellites in 2024, achieving regional network coverage of 648 satellites by the end of 2025, providing global network coverage by the end of 2027, and finally achieving a network of approximately 15,000 satellites by 2030 to provide multi-service integration services such as direct mobile phone connection. However, the reality is far from what was expected. As of August 15, 2025, the Qianfan Constellation has only completed the launch of 90 satellites. Not only has it not completed the launch of the 2024 target of 108 satellites, let alone achieving the launch of 648 satellites by the end of 2025. Qianfan Constellation Networking Progress At 14:42 on August 6, 2024, Qianfan Polar Orbit 01 satellites (18 satellites in total) were successfully launched from the LC-9A station of the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center aboard the Long March 6A carrier rocket. <\/p>\n
At 19:06 on October 15, 2024, Qianfan Polar Orbit Group 02 satellites (18 satellites in total) were successfully launched from the LC-9A station of the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center aboard the Long March 6A carrier rocket.<\/p>\n
At 12:41 on December 5, 2024, Qianfan Polar Orbit Group 03 satellites (18 satellites in total) were successfully launched from the LC-9A station of the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center on a Long March 6A carrier rocket.<\/p>\n
At 13:15 on January 23, 2025, Qianfan Polar Orbit 06 satellites (18 satellites in total) were successfully launched from the LC-9A station of the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center aboard the Long March 6A carrier rocket.<\/p>\n
At 0:38 on March 12, 2025, Qianfan Polar Orbit Group 04 satellites (18 in total) were successfully launched aboard the Long March 8 carrier rocket at Station 1 of the Hainan Commercial Space Launch Site.<\/p>\n
Judging from the launch progress, up to now, Qianfan Constellation has launched a total of 5 times, with 18 stars each time, for a total of 90 stars. However, judging from this year\u2019s launch situation, since March 12 this year, for more than five months, the Qianfan Constellation has not had any launch missions.<\/p>\n
Possible impacts caused by network failure that is not as expected<\/p>\n
1. Shanghai Yuanxin is different from Star Network. It is a commercial enterprise. Qianfan Constellation\u2019s networking funds come from shareholders\u2019 investments. Investors are not philanthropists. The core purpose of their investment is to obtain excess returns. Yuanxin\u2019s acceptance of the investment means that he promises to use the money to achieve business growth and value enhancement at an extraordinary speed, and ultimately bring benefits to investors. If the company continues to fail to achieve the expected KPI targets, it will not only mean that it cannot fulfill its performance commitments to old shareholders, but it will also undermine the investment confidence of potential investors and affect future financing plans.<\/p>\n
2. Qianfan Constellation is different from the “GW” constellation. It is a project with a particularly commercial nature. The heavy commercial nature means that Qianfan Constellation has to face sufficient market competition. In market competition, whoever enters the market first will have an advantage. When users are used to the services of one company, the cost of switching users to competitors will be very high. Starlink was put into service a few years earlier than Qianfan Constellation and has already occupied a large market share. It has a great advantage in this regard. If Qianfan Constellation cannot establish networking capabilities as soon as possible, it will have a great impact on future market expansion and make it more difficult to stand out in the competition with international giants such as Space-X and OneWeb. The greater impact is that if Qianfan Constellation cannot continue to strive for, consolidate, and expand its advantages, it will greatly affect investors’ expectations, thus forming a vicious cycle of: deterioration of expectations \u2192 falling valuation \u2192 weakening of financing capabilities \u2192 strategic contraction\/layoffs \u2192 slowdown in business growth \u2192 further deterioration of expectations, seriously affecting the future survival and development of Shanghai Yuanxin.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Recently, the intensive launch of the “GW” constellation has attracted widespread attention to the satellite Internet industry. While we are pleased with the launch progress of the “GW” constellation, the situation of my country’s other 10,000-satellite constellation project is not optimistic. According to Shanghai Yuanxin\u2019s original plan, the Qianfan Constellation project is divided into three […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25344","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25344"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25344"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25344\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25344"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25344"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25344"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}