China’s main space contractor says it plans to begin operating suborbital space tourism flights within the next five years, as China steps up commercial spaceflight and deep-space ambitions during a technology race with the United States.
State-owned China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) said it aims to start suborbital space tourism operations and then work toward orbital space tourism, according to reporting that cited China’s state broadcaster CCTV.
Five-year space tourism push
CASC said it would “achieve the flight operation of suborbital space tourism and gradually develop orbital space tourism,” according to the CCTV report cited by syndicated coverage. CGTN also reported that China aims to speed up development of suborbital and orbital space tourism vehicles, complete unmanned and manned flight verification work, and set up an operating system for space tourism.
CGTN said the stated goal is to reach regular suborbital space tourism flights and then progress toward orbital space tourism. The same CGTN report framed these plans as part of CASC’s push to promote new “space+” development scenarios during China’s 15th Five-Year Plan period.
Digital infrastructure and “space+” projects
Alongside tourism, CASC said it would build a “gigawatt-level space digital intelligence infrastructure,” according to the CCTV report carried in syndicated coverage. CGTN described plans to build gigawatt-level space digital infrastructure and to develop an integrated architecture that links cloud, edge, and terminal technologies.
CGTN said this approach is intended to integrate computing, storage, and transmission capabilities to support space-based data processing and Earth-space collaborative computing. CGTN also reported that CASC plans feasibility studies for a major “Tiangong Kaiwu” project focused on space resource development experiments and ground support systems.
In that same outline, CGTN said CASC highlighted technologies such as asteroid resource exploration, intelligent autonomous extraction, low-cost transportation, and in-orbit processing. CGTN added that CASC also pointed to efforts on space debris monitoring, early warning, and removal, with an aim of strengthening China’s role in shaping international space traffic management rules.
Deep-space ambitions and new training school
Syndicated coverage said CASC has vowed to transform China into a “world-leading space power” by 2045. It also reported that China inaugurated its first School of Interstellar Navigation housed in the Chinese Academy of Sciences on Tuesday to help train talent in frontier areas such as interstellar propulsion and deep-space navigation.
According to the Xinhua report described in that coverage, the school is meant to support China’s planned lunar research station and efforts to detect planets outside the solar system. Xinhua also said the next 10 to 20 years could be a window for leapfrog development in interstellar navigation, and that innovation and breakthroughs could reshape deep-space exploration, according to the same syndicated account.
Reusable rockets and satellite competition
The syndicated report said China’s key bottleneck so far is that it has not completed a reusable rocket test. It also said U.S. rival SpaceX uses its Falcon 9 reusable rocket to support Starlink, which it described as having a near-monopoly in low Earth orbit satellites, and that Falcon 9 is also used for orbital space tourism.
The same coverage said reusability is critical for reducing launch costs and making it cheaper to send satellites into space. It reported that China achieved a record 93 space launches last year, based on official announcements, and attributed that pace in part to fast-developing commercial spaceflight startups.
It also reported that China has repeatedly described SpaceX’s dominance in low Earth orbit satellites as a national security risk and is launching its own satellite constellations, which it hopes will reach tens of thousands in coming decades. In late December, Chinese entities filed with the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) plans that the report said laid out roughly 200,000 satellites over the next 14 years, with two mega-constellations making up most of the total.
Separately, a Business Times report said SpaceX expects to use funds from a planned US$25 billion initial public offering in 2026 to develop orbital AI data centres, citing terrestrial energy constraints. The same syndicated reporting on China’s plans said the U.S. faces intense competition from China this decade in efforts to return astronauts to the moon, where it said humans have not been since the final U.S. Apollo mission in 1972.
