Tianyi Research Institute Of "Playing Space In A Different Way": From Xiaoxiang No.1 To Hisi-1

In the early morning of January 15, 2021, an earthquake of magnitude 6.2 occurred in Sulawesi province, Indonesia. After the earthquake, the international intergovernmental organization geo (earth observation organization) sent a request to the space agencies of various countries, hoping to use the remote sensing satellites of various countries to image the disaster area, so as to provide support for the local government in disaster assessment and post disaster rescue.

On the evening of January 17, the Indonesian government received the world's first effective satellite remote sensing data of disaster areas, and this data was captured by the launch of the hiss-1 satellite less than a month ago.

At 12:37 p.m. on December 22, 2020, the hisi-1 carrier rocket developed by Tianyi Research Institute, China Electronics 38 Institute, Xiamen University and other units was successfully launched. This is a synthetic aperture radar (SAR) remote sensing satellite. On December 25, 2020, hisi-1 successfully obtained the first batch of in orbit images, which not only fills the gap of commercial SAR satellites in China, but also makes Tianyi research institute the first commercial company operating SAR satellites in China.

For the Tianyi Research Institute, which has been established for five years, the successful launch of hisi-1 satellite is of great significance, because it means that the Institute has formally realized the leap from a satellite developer to a satellite data operator.

Ren Weijia, co-founder of Tianyi Research Institute and CTO, said in an exclusive interview with the 21st century economic report recently that Tianyi had a basic judgment since its establishment, that is, the market prospect of satellite manufacturing is extremely limited, and the future larger market must be to provide ground services through satellites.

In the past few years, the development path of Tianyi Research Institute has become increasingly clear: first, through independent research and development of satellites, reduce the cost of satellites, and then send satellites into space in batches to form large-scale constellations, and then provide cost-effective satellite services to the ground.

Up to now, the Institute has completed 12 space missions and successfully launched 21 small satellites. Ren Weijia disclosed to reporters that according to Tianyi's plan, in the next 3-5 years, Tianyi will complete the networking of 96 SAR remote sensing satellite constellations. At that time, for most parts of the world, the satellite of Tianyi can basically guarantee the coverage frequency at least once every hour.

Radar satellite vs optical satellite

Remote sensing satellites are generally divided into optical remote sensing satellites and radar remote sensing satellites. Regarding the difference between optical satellites and radar satellites, Ren Weijia, for example, says that optical satellites are like cameras, while radar satellites are like X-ray films. From the naked eye effect, radar satellites are not as delicate as optical satellites. However, many advantages of radar satellites are incomparable to optical satellites.

First of all, radar remote sensing satellites are not affected by weather and day and night. However, optical satellites have many restrictions. It is possible that a cloud can block its shooting, let alone rain or fog. Moreover, optical remote sensing can hardly work at night.

"So, if a satellite can map at the same place for several consecutive days, it's basically a radar satellite," Ren Weijia said. "When I chat with others, I often say that if you don't take pictures with (optical) satellites, you don't know how many clouds there are on the earth. If you don't consider all kinds of auxiliary means, the success rate of photographing optical satellites is only about 10%.

In addition, because radar satellites work in microwave band, which is very different from visible light band, radar satellite can also obtain some information which can not be perceived by human eyes and optical satellites, so as to realize a variety of different applications.

According to Ren Weijia, the radar satellite has a certain penetrability, which can penetrate the turf to see the roughness and dry humidity of the soil under the turf; In addition, the radar satellite can also obtain the phase information of the target, according to this phase information, it can monitor the surface subsidence of several millimeters.

These technologies have been used at the national macro level, but at the micro level, they are rarely used, because at present, these satellite data are still lack of timeliness.

For example, after the earthquake in Indonesia, it has been three days since the Tianyi Research Institute submitted a satellite image, but this is still the first in the world. From the perspective of disaster relief, if an image can be obtained immediately after a disaster, it must be the most ideal.

Another example is that a local agricultural bureau once communicated with Ren Weijia. They said that agriculture attaches great importance to solar terms. If the satellite can provide panoramic images according to different solar terms, it is very important to master the agricultural situation. But the reality is that they can only get a chart every quarter now, which is very lagging behind.

"So when remote sensing solves the problem of timeliness, it will burst into a huge market. We are equivalent to standing in the perspective of God, and the various states of the earth's surface can be mastered at any time Ren Weijia said.

The adventure of Hess one

The SAR satellite constellation planned by Tianyi hopes to solve the problem of timeliness, but before that, as a commercial company, the first thing Tianyi Research Institute has to solve is how to produce SAR satellites in a more efficient and economical way.

On hisi-1, many bold innovations of Tianyi Research Institute are reflected. According to Ren Weijia, in terms of satellite architecture, Tianyi has broken the original mode of "holding" radar by satellite, and has adopted the integrated design of radar and satellite for the first time in China. This makes the weight of other similar SAR satellites still at 300 kg level, while the weight of hisi-1 is only 185kg.

Secondly, hiss-1 did not choose military grade devices with high cost, but replaced it with industrial products, which not only reduced the cost of the satellite by dozens of times, but also reduced the size of the satellite several times.

In addition, hiss-1 also adopts a folding design of the whole satellite, which makes it take up less rocket space when launching. Ren Weijia said that in the past, the launch of radar satellites was the main task of rocket launching, but the hess-1 was built in a corner of the rocket, which further reduced the cost of rocket launching.

Finally, the process optimization. In the past, before the launch of radar satellites, they all went to the launch site for a month or two of the whole process test, but the launch site test of hisi-1 only took about three days.

Ren Weijia said that the previous pre launch test was basically equivalent to rebuilding a laboratory at the launch site, with high cost. However, hisi-1 only did the simplest power-on test, and did not carry out all kinds of deployment tests, and the intermediate test cost was reduced by dozens of times.

It turns out that Tianyi's adventure was a success. Ren Weijia said that innovation is not just technological innovation. Based on our understanding of the process, removing some unnecessary processes is also an innovation.

Of course, this is also the difference in concept between commercial aerospace and the national team. In order to ensure the success of the national team, it will reduce the risk at all costs, while as a commercial company, it has to calculate the general ledger.

"If there is a 10% risk in not doing the test, I will certainly control it, but if it is only 0.1% risk, then I would rather take a risk. At this time, commercial aerospace does not pursue 100% success in all missions. " Ren Weijia said, "for example, it takes 100 million yuan for a satellite to ensure its one-time success. We would rather reduce the cost of a satellite to 10 million yuan, even if it fails twice and succeeds again, then the single satellite cost of this satellite is only 30 million yuan. But what if we reduce the cost to one million? Even if it fails 10 times, the whole cost is only 10 million. But if we can launch a satellite by 10 million, the cost will be reduced by 10 times. "

Another way to play space

Looking back on the past few years, Ren Weijia believes that the Tianyi Research Institute has made its way to the present day by taking risks again and again“ We believe that the essence of commercial aerospace is a process of innovation, trial and error, and continuous iteration in order to reduce costs. Although there are too many problems in the process, as long as we can see the direction clearly, we need resolute action, and innovation is all done. "

Ren Weijia told reporters that when he came out to start a business, he suddenly found that there was another way to open up many things after he came into contact with the capital market in 2014, so he decided to play aerospace in a different way.

In 2015, Ren Weijia left the Chinese Academy of Sciences and founded Tianyi Research Institute with Yang Feng, the current CEO of Tianyi Research Institute.

At that time, at the suggestion of Ren Weijia, Tianyi chose scientific research small satellites as the breakthrough field. Ren Weijia said that starting from scientific research satellites, on the one hand, is due to the relatively low requirements for scientific research satellites, which are more suitable for technological accumulation in the early stage of development of Tianyi; on the other hand, it is more suitable for making scientific research satellites, which are more in line with the genes of Tianyi.

Before the founding of Tianyi Research Institute, Ren Weijia participated in the missions of Shenzhou-4, Shenzhou-5, Shenzhou-6, Shenzhou-7, Shenzhou-8, Tiangong-1, tiangong-2, tianzhou-1 and manned space station. At that time, he was mainly responsible for various scientific research on the spacecraft. In addition, Ren Weijia also participated in the development of a ground satellite from 2003 to 2007, so he is very familiar with the whole satellite manufacturing process.

However, when Ren Weijia began to lead the team to develop the first satellite "xiaoxiang-1" of Tianyi Research Institute, he also experienced the hardships of being a start-up company“ At that time, there were more than 20 people in the company, including about 15 technical teams. However, I was the only one who had worked in aerospace Ren Weijia said.

In such a state, Ren Weijia and his team bravely completed this almost impossible task in less than one year, and built the satellite. On November 10, 2016, the xiaoxiang-1 satellite was successfully launched with the Long March 11 carrier rocket. However, after a few days in the sky, xiaoxiang-1 lost contact with the ground.

This is the first satellite of the Tianyi Research Institute, and its loss of contact almost brought disaster to Tianyi. Ren Weijia said: on the one hand, it is the cost. After the satellite fails, the day after tomorrow instrument needs to bear the cost of sending another one. On the other hand, it is the trust of the capital market. At that time, many investors were reluctant to invest when they saw that your satellite was out of order, which made Tianyi almost unable to go down.

Looking back, Ren Weijia thinks that Tianyi at that time was "fearless for the ignorant", but it was with this audacity that Tianyi completed the verification of the whole process of satellite manufacturing and launching in the first year of its establishment. Although there were major setbacks, in the process, Tianyi completed a lot of verification of key technologies, which also laid the foundation for future satellite development.

Since then, Tianyi continued to iterate rapidly at the rate of 1-2 rounds per year. From "xiaoxiang-1", which never completed most of the tasks, to "hisi-1", which attracted the attention of the industry, the launch of these satellites may become remote if we follow the rules and regulations.

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