China needs to cut commercial space costs to compete with India, says Chinese media.
Two days after hailing India's significant achievement, the Chinese media on Monday said that ISRO's successful launch of a record 104 satellites was a wake-up call for China's commercial space industry.
"There are a number of lessons for the country to learn," said the China's Global Times.
Scripting history, India on Wednesday successfully launched a record 104 satellites — all but three of them foreign — from Sriharikota and put them into orbit in a single mission onboard its most dependable Polar rocket.
Stating that of the 104 satellites, 96 belong to the US, the Chinese daily said that it makes India a fierce competitor in the global market for commercial rocket launch services. "The South Asian nation's achievements are largely driven by its low price advantage, a weak point for China's commercial space sector," the daily added.
Further adding that the competition with India for commercial space launches may be inevitable, it said, "Most urgent action needed for China to expand its market share is to reduce the cost of putting satellites into orbit."
It also highlighted that the country should make a fundamental transformation to allow some institutions in its space sector to run like a business instead of as government-backed research bodies.
Earlier, it had asserted that the China was way too ahead of the rising power. "The engine of its rockets is not powerful enough to support large-scale space exploration. There is no Indian astronaut in space and the country's plan to establish a space station has not started," the daily stated.
As the country seeks a bigger slice of the multi-billion dollar space launch industry, the Indian Space Research Organisation(ISRO) bettered Russian space agency's feat of launching 37 satellites at one go in 2014. The previous highest number of satellites launched by ISRO in one mission was 20 in June 2015.
The complex mission once again proved ISRO's capabilities in undertaking commercial launches with the PSLV achieving its 38th consecutive success.
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