Port to deep space: China’s ‘hopeless’ satellites create first Earth-moon nav-com network

Name: Space race elevates Asia in new world order
Uploaded: 2025-04-18T14:00:08.000Z
Duration: 11 min 5 s
Description: Space race elevates Asia in new world order

DRO-L, DRO-A and DRO-B finally form a communication and navigation system spanning from low Earth orbit to distant retrograde orbit

Reading Time:3 minutes

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A Long March 2C rocket lifted off with satellites DRO-A and DRO-B from Xichang Satellite Centre in March last year but they failed to reach a planned orbit on their way to the moon Photo: Xinhua

Ling Xinin Ohio

Published: 10:00pm, 18 Apr 2025

The world’s first satellite constellation in Earth-moon space is up and running, after a team of young Chinese engineers recovered two of the spacecraft that had been stranded in the wrong orbit for months following a launch mishap last year.

The constellation of three satellites operating in “cislunar” space forms a highly efficient communication and navigation network stretching from low Earth orbit to distant retrograde orbit (DRO), a region 310,000km to 450,000km (192,600-280,000 miles) from Earth, according to state broadcaster CCTV.

That area is often seen as a potential staging point for missions to the moon, Mars and beyond.

Among the mission’s technical firsts was a record-setting 1.17 million km space-to-space communication link between satellites, showing that a network could stay connected reliably across the vast distance between Earth and the moon, CCTV said on Tuesday.

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Space race elevates Asia in new world order

“For the first time, we’ve showed that satellites can track each other instead of relying on ground stations,” said Wang Wenbin, a researcher at the Centre for Space Applications Engineering and Technology under the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), the lead institute on the project.