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 1 - 7 February.

1) iSpace Fails in the Second Launch of the Hyperbola-1
Chinese launch startup iSpace failed in the second launch of its Hyperbola-1 rocket earlier this week, with a Chinese language report reporting abnormalities in both the first and second stages in a launch on Monday 1 Feb. It was later pointed out that there had been apparently significant modifications to the Hyperbola-1 rocket between the first and second launch, which may have complicated the launch process. It may also have been an indication of the extent to which Chinese commercial space companies are by design nimble, needing to pivot often in order to increase their chances of survival. The launch failure is a setback for iSpace, and may create an opening for Landspace, or even Galactic Energy, to jump out in front as China’s most advanced commercial launch company. iSpace appears to still be a quite solid company, with an intact leadership team and a successful launch from 2019 under their belt. That said, the company has historically been less public about their activities than competitors such as Landspace or Expace, so it is hard to say how much trouble iSpace is or is not in following the launch failure.

2) Beijing Adds Satellite Internet to its Priorities for 2021
Actually from last week, we saw the Municipal People’s Congress of Beijing Municipality, where the city’s leaders discussed key tasks for the coming 1 year, as well as the coming 5-year plan period (2021-2025). This included many high-level targets, including 6% economic growth for the city in 2021, urban unemployment below 5%, and CPI of 3%. As reported by Chinese space industry think tank and event organizer FutureSpace, the Beijing Government’s document included emphasis on developing the digital economy, promoting high-quality development, and developing services that can be deployed across the Belt and Road. While admittedly nebulous, the inclusion of these several buzz phrases does reveal a fair amount about Beijing’s aspirations. The plans also mentioned two specific phrases related to satellite, namely developing a satellite internet industry, and accelerating development of high-end precision sensors for space/aerospace.

3) OneSpace Completes Successful Reentry Test Launch
Chinese launch startup OneSpace completed a test launch of its OSX-6B on 5 February. The launch took place from Northwest China, with the test flight lasting approximately 580 seconds, reaching an altitude of 300km. Noteworthily, the rocket was called the Chongqing Liangjiang Star, an homage to the Liangjiang New Area of Chongqing. Liangjiang is a major initiative by the Chongqing Municipal Government, with significant investment going into industrial parks and other related infrastructure in Liangjiang.

4) Tianwen-1 sends back its first image of Mars
We received this week the first image of Mars from Tianwen-1, a beautiful monochrome picture shot at 2.2 million km away from Mars, as the Chinese spacecraft enters its final approach. This is symbolic of Tianwen-1 entering the final phases of its trip to Mars as it gets ready to be “captured” by the Martian gravitational field. Tianwen-1 was launched on July 23 2020, in the Mars launch window of 2020 (which occurs every 26