China Unveils Advanced 'Space Umbrella' to Rival Starlink

China continues to push technological development, including in satellite Internet, an area currently dominated by Starlink of SpaceX, Elon Musk’s space company. Recently, one of China’s private space companies, Galaxy Space, unveiled a unique satellite antenna whose shape resembles a folding umbrella. The antenna is designed to fold tightly during rocket launch and then ‘unfold’ once in Earth orbit. Because of its shape and mechanism resembling an umbrella, the technology is nicknamed a “space umbrella” or space umbrella. According to Galaxy Space, this ‘advanced umbrella’ is the first high-performance deployable umbrella antenna developed by a private space company in China. So what is such an umbrella-like antenna intended for? The technology will be used to support satellite Internet, communications, navigation, and Earth mapping. One of the main objectives of its development is to support direct satellite-to-smartphone connections, or direct-to-cell, similar to what Starlink is developing. In other words, mobile phones could connect directly to the Internet via satellite without relying too much on Base Transceiver Station (BTS) towers on the ground. This kind of technology is considered important for remote areas, blind-spot regions or areas without signal coverage, and for disaster communications when mobile networks are interrupted. Galaxy Space says the umbrella-like design was chosen to maximise space efficiency inside the rocket, since satellite antennas are usually large to enable stronger reception and transmission; rocket storage space, by contrast, is limited. A simple analogy is a folding umbrella placed in a bag when closed and then opened when used.