A Chinese startup has raised nearly $15 million for its own satellite constellation designed to track orbital objects. This is part of a broader wave that is rapidly making space situational awareness a priority of China’s space program.
The Beijing Company and Its Satellites
The startup Xingchen Daohe, also known as Stars Harmony, was founded in Beijing in May 2024. According to SpaceNews, on July 22, 2026, the company closed a funding round worth approximately $14.8 million. The funds will be used to develop and deploy the Guanlan constellation and expand the team working on it.
Guanlan will provide continuous space-based tracking of orbital objects. Its main tasks will be to help prevent collisions, optimize orbits, and manage space traffic.
The services are intended for both military and civilian satellite operators. Investors in the round included the Beihang Tianhui incubator affiliated with Beihang University, several venture capital funds, and the state investment mechanism Changsha Chengfa. Shortly after raising the funds, Xingchen Daohe signed an agreement to relocate to Beijing’s “Satellite Town” under the official industrial policy known as “Southern Rockets, Northern Satellites.”
From Plans to Launches
The key point is that the sector is no longer limited to presentations. In July 2026, Aotian launched the Gande-1 spacecraft aboard a solid-fuel Kinetica-1 rocket. It is described as China’s first commercial satellite dedicated specifically to monitoring space debris. It is the first spacecraft in a planned 120-satellite constellation.
Meanwhile, Zhongke Xingtu, which listed on the Beijing Stock Exchange in 2025, is preparing test satellites for its own 156-satellite constellation. Competitors are also moving forward. Kaiyun is developing the Spacemapper catalog of space objects and plans a 108-satellite constellation, while Qingbo Kuntian, established on the basis of Tsinghua University, has promised an experimental SSA satellite in 2026.
Two Catalogs Instead of One
The activity of Chinese startups has a clear state-backed foundation. In October 2025, the China Aerospace Studies Institute of the U.S. Air Force published a report stating that the Chinese government aims to localize the two-line element orbital format, or TLE, by 2028. For decades, the United States has distributed orbital data on nearly all objects in the TLE format, and the world has relied on this source as the primary reference. China wants to shift from being a consumer of data to becoming a country that sets the rules.
The emergence of a separate Chinese catalog would mean the fragmentation of the global orbital safety system. Satellite constellation operators would either have to choose which source to trust or compare both.
This situation will become especially significant as the People’s Liberation Army of China shows growing interest in international norms and space law, while access to its own data strengthens the country’s ability to influence the development of those same norms. In China’s 15th Five-Year Plan for 2026–2030, space situational awareness has already been established as one of the priorities of the commercial space sector, alongside reusable launch vehicles and orbital computing.
