Investment in first stage of construction of Hainan's Space City to reach $1 billion

According to the article, the management of the Wenchang Innovation Development Zone, where a number of strategically important facilities are being built, announced on February 6 the launch of the first phase of construction and engineering work. The building area, as noted, is 237 hectares.

The implementation of the first phase of this project will take five years. According to the contract a network of modern infrastructure should be created in Wenchang Aerospace City.

"This is an initial project, once completed, efforts will be coordinated to form a utility and aerospace cluster site in Wenchang Space City," the operating company commented.

Hainan is important to China's space development. The Wenchang Space Launch Centre is one of China's four space harbors and is the only place in the country where technical conditions allow the launch of the CZ-7A (Chang Cheng 7-a), the longest (60.7 m) rocket of national design. China's other next-generation launchers, which only Hainan is capable of launching, are the commercial CZ-8, as well as the CZ-5 and CZ-5B ("Chang Cheng 5" and "Chang Cheng 5-be"). They are the most massive (870 and 837.5 tons, respectively) of all counterparts developed in China.

Five Tianzhou unmanned cargo spacecraft, the core module of the Chinese Tianhe orbital station and its Wentian and Mengtian laboratory modules, the Tianwen-1 Mars probe and the Chang'e-5 unmanned lunar exploration vehicle were launched from the Hainan launch site. In addition, Wenchang allowed China to put many satellites into orbit.