Chinese space company Orienspace, founded in 2020, has announced that it has been able to raise over $100 million through numerous investors. With this huge amount of money, the Chinese space company plans to develop its series of Gravity rockets with which Orienspace aims to compete with other space companies such as SpaceX and Rocket Lab. Orienspace wants to launch the first Gravity 1 rocket in 2023 with which it can bring satellites up to three tons into low Earth orbit. In addition to Orienspace, numerous other space companies have been established in China in recent years such as Galactic Energy and OneSpace, which are fully engaged in developing their own commercial rockets to put satellites into space.
Orienspace was founded in 2020 and is one of the new space companies in China with high expectations. In November 2021, Yao Song became CEO of Orienspace who also previously founded the successful technology company Shenjian Technology. Today the company has about seventy employees and is based in Haiyang City. After Orienspace raised 62 million dollars in June 2021 during an initial investment round, the company announced in January 2022 that it had raised another 47.3 million dollars through numerous investors. This money will be used by Orienspace mainly for the further development of rocket motors that will be used in the Gravity rockets. The basis of the Gravity 1 rocket will be formed by a central rocket stage that runs on liquid fuel with four booster rockets attached to it that use solid fuel. This new Gravity 1 will be 31 meters high and should be able to bring satellites up to three tons into low Earth orbit from 2023 onwards. In addition, Orienspace also plans to develop larger and more powerful versions of the Gravity 1 rocket that should be able to bring 15 tons (Gravity 2) and even 30 tons (Gravity 3) to low Earth orbit.
What is remarkable about the design of the Gravity rockets is that Orienspace is also betting on reusability like the American space company SpaceX is doing with its Falcon 9 rocket. For example, the design of the Gravity 3 rocket bears many similarities to SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket since the lower rocket stages of the Gravity 3 must also return to Earth after launch. In addition, Orienspace also plans to launch its Gravity rockets from a special platform at sea and wants to land its rocket stages and booster rockets back at special platforms at sea. Yao Song also let it be known in November 2021 that Orienspace hopes to be able to launch some of the satellites into space from China's future network of satellites that will be used for broadband Internet. This Chinese constellation of Internet satellites will consist of about 13 000 satellites. In order to get contracts for this, Orienspace will have to compete with several other young Chinese space companies such as Galactic Energy, LinkSpace, i-Space, OneSpace and LandSpace. Since the Chinese government opened up space to private companies as well in 2014, numerous new space companies have already been established.
