Sweden’s state-run space agency, the Swedish Space Corporation (SSC), said Monday (Sept. 21) that it has decided not to renew or seek new business once their contract with China expires. SSC has been using its own ground monitoring station to help China manipulate satellites. Earlier Monday, the company had said it would not extend a contract allowing China to use a strategic space monitoring station in Western Australia. The decision is thought to affect China’s expanding space exploration and its telemetry capabilities in the Pacific region.
According to Reuters, the Swedish space company said the geopolitical situation has changed since it signed contracts with China in the early 2000s, making it increasingly difficult to make assessments of the Chinese market. The contracts cover weather and Earth detection satellites. The company did not disclose further details about the contracts, or how many Chinese satellites it would help operate.
Another earlier Reuters report indicated that China would lose the use of a space monitoring station in Western Australia, a contract SSC began with China at least nine years ago, in 2011, through which SSC allowed China to use the ground station’s satellite antenna.
The station is adjacent to another SSC satellite station, whose main customers are the United States and agencies such as NASA. Sweden’s state-owned SSC told Reuters that it will not renew its current contract with China’s Australian control station until it expires, and will not renew it to support Chinese customers. However, SSC did not say when the lease would expire.
In response to a request for comment from Reuters via email, the Swedish space company said, “Given the complexity of the Chinese market due to the overall geopolitical situation, SSC has decided to focus mainly on other markets in the coming years. The Western Australia monitoring station is owned by SSC Space Australia, a subsidiary of SSC.
Neither the Australian government nor China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs responded to Reuters’ requests for comment.
The expansion of China’s space capabilities, including the growing maturity of its Beidou navigation network, is one of the new frontiers of tension between the United States and China. In addition, the two countries have clashed over everything from technology and trade to China’s activities in the disputed South China Sea.
Australia is an important U.S. ally, and cooperation between the two countries includes space research and space programs. In contrast, Canberra’s diplomatic and trade relations with Beijing have become increasingly strained of late.
China last used the Yatharagga satellite station, located about 350 kilometers (250 miles) north of Perth, Australia, in June 2013 to support the Shenzhou 10 mission, which involved three astronauts, the SSC said. During that mission, Shenzhou 10 completed a series of space docking tests.
The current contract supports China’s scientific space missions in its manned space flight program for telemetry, tracking and command services, SSC told Reuters.
Ground stations are an important part of the space program because they create telecommunications links to spacecraft. Although space stations have different capabilities, they can be used to coordinate satellites used by civil-military Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS), such as China’s Beidou, Russia’s GLONASS, the European Union’s Galileo system, and the U.S.-owned GPS.
In recent years, China’s space program has been increasing access to overseas ground stations as it has expanded its space exploration and navigation program.
Last year, the Swedish Defense Research Agency said in a report that China could make military use of antennas at its Esrange ground station in Sweden in the far north. China has denied that any of its satellites are used for military purposes in its contracts with Sweden.
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