CAST China Space Technology News Scraper

Scrapes news articles from CAST (中国空间技术研究院 — China Academy of Space Technology), the primary satellite manufacturer for China (~70% of all Chinese satellites). CAST built Shenzhou crewed spacecraft, Tiangong space station modules, Chang'e lunar landers, Tianwen Mars rover, and every major Chinese satellite bus platform (DFH-3, DFH-4, DFH-5).

What it scrapes

Articles from CAST's news channels, including:

Channel ID	Name	Description
690	本院动态	Institute news (flagship engineering announcements)
689	媒体聚焦	Media coverage and external press
688	八面来风	External industry coverage
1051	科技动态	Technology updates
1065	型号成就	Product/mission achievements

Output fields

Each record contains:

Field	Description
article_id	Numeric ID from URL (/news/{id})
channel_id	Source channel ID
channel_name	Human-readable channel name in Chinese
title_zh	Article title in Chinese
body_html	Full article body as raw HTML
body_text	Full article body as plain text
publish_date	Publish date in ISO-8601 format (YYYY-MM-DD)
source	Credited source (信息来源 field)
source_url	Canonical URL (https://www.cast.cn/news/{id})
images	Pipe-separated list of image URLs from article body
scrapedAt	ISO-8601 timestamp when scraped

Input

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
channelIds	array of integers	[690, 689, 688]	CAST channel IDs to scrape
maxItems	integer	10	Maximum articles to scrape (0 = no limit)

Use cases

• Competitive intelligence: Bus platform announcements (DFH-5 rollout, Shijian series) appear in CAST news before CASC press releases
• Mission tracking: Launch outcomes, spacecraft integration milestones
• Defense/space industry analysis: Satellite-bus competitive intelligence for Boeing/Lockheed/Airbus DS analysts
• Academic research: Primary-source Chinese space program news in structured format

Notes

• The site is dated and slow-moving; the actor handles its quirks
• No authentication required; publicly accessible
• CAST is also known as the Fifth Research Institute (五院) of CASC