China Mulls Creation of Joint Global Satellite System with Russia - Source

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - A Chinese delegation has proposed to Russia's Roscosmos state space corporation to discuss a possibility of the creation of a joint global satellite communications system, which could become an analogue of UK's OneWeb satellite constellation or Starlink, a source from Russian space industry told Sputnik.

"During the bilateral meeting on July 4, the Chinese delegation, which arrived in Moscow to get acquainted with the new leadership of Roscosmos, presented, among other things, its plans to create a multi-level satellite communications system. During the meeting, a proposal was announced about Russia's participation in the project," the source said.

According to the source, China is considering a possibility of creating a national satellite communications system of about 1,000 spacecraft located in low, medium and geostationary orbit, which will be a response to the OneWeb system, which will have about 900 spacecraft in low orbit.
"The Chinese delegation proposed to create a Russian-Chinese system with the obligation for each party to create half of the orbital satellite constellation and take 50 percent of costs," the source said adding that the Russian side provided no response to this proposal.

Roscosmos has not provided any comments on this issue so far.

In May, Russian Space Systems (RSS) presented a project of the new Russian global satellite communications system ETHER that should consist of 288 satellites with an orbit altitude of 870 kilometers (540.5 miles). The project requires investments of 300 billion rubles ($4.87 billion).
OneWeb is a UK space project, which is expected to provide global Internet broadband service to individual consumers as early as 2019 as it's satellites will cover the entire Earth surface. The list of project's investors includes such companies as Airbus Group, Bharti Enterprises, Hughes Network Systems and others.

Source: China made an offer to Russia to jointly create competitor OneWeb

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MOSCOW, July 8 (Itar-Tass) - RIA Novosti. The Chinese delegation at the talks in Moscow suggested that Roscosmos discuss the possibility of creating a joint satellite group to provide broadband Internet access to OneWeb and Starlink, a source in the rocket and space industry told RIA Novosti.

Earlier, Roskosmos presented its response to OneWeb, the satellite system Efir, which was to include 300 satellites. The creation of the system would require investments of 300 billion rubles. In the future, it was decided to combine it with other areas - navigation satellites and Earth remote sensing satellites into the Sfera system and increase the total grouping of up to 600 satellites.

"During a bilateral meeting on July 4, the Chinese delegation, who arrived in Moscow to get acquainted with the new leadership of Roskosmos, presented plans for the formation of a multi-level satellite communication group, including a proposal on Russia's participation in the project," the interlocutor of the agency.

According to him, China is considering the possibility of creating a national satellite system of about a thousand spacecraft located in low, medium and geostationary orbits - a unique response to the OneWeb system, which will have about 900 spacecraft in low orbit.

"There was a proposal to create a joint Russian-Chinese system, where each of the parties would create half the orbital group and assume 50 percent of the costs," the source said.

According to him, the Russian side did not sound any response to the proposal.

In the state corporation Roskosmos, RIA Novosti did not comment on this information.