Qianfan ("Thousand Sails", also called G60) is a Chinese low-Earth-orbit broadband mega-constellation led by Shanghai-backed Spacesail. Launching in batches of 18 since August 2024, it targets roughly 1,300 satellites by 2027 and ~14,000 long term — one of two Chinese answers to Starlink, alongside Guowang.
Understanding Qianfan
Two constellations, one strategy
China's broadband ambition runs on parallel tracks. Guowang ("national network") is the centrally directed programme under state operator China SatNet; Qianfan is the commercially structured, locally championed venture — municipal investment, a listed-company supply chain, and explicit export marketing. The division of labour echoes a familiar pattern in Chinese industrial policy: a state flagship guarantees the strategic capability while a commercial competitor drives cost and cadence. For the rest of the world the practical readout is spectrum and market competition: both systems filed for tens of thousands of satellites, both court international customers, and together they ensure the LEO broadband market will not be a single-provider story. The two programmes' differing orbits — Qianfan's ~1,000 km versus much of Guowang's lower filings — also mean different debris-lifetime profiles, a point regulators and astronomers both watch.
What to watch as it scales
Three curves tell the Qianfan story. Launch cadence: batches of 18 must fly frequently to hit ~1,296 by 2027, so the gap between launches is the honest progress meter. Orbit-raising behaviour: each batch's climb from insertion to the operational shell reveals propulsion performance and failure rates — satellites that stall at insertion altitude become long-term residents at 1,000 km, where debris lingers for centuries rather than years. And brightness: whether darkening measures appear on later batches will show how seriously the operator takes the astronomy complaints. All three are exactly what a live tracker makes visible — follow the constellation's actual state on the Qianfan tracker rather than the press releases.