Galactic Energy carried out the first private space mission in China in 2026 on Friday, successfully launching its Ceres-1 carrier rocket from a sea-based platform and placing four commercial satellites into orbit, the company said.<\/p>\n
The solid-fuel rocket lifted off at 4:10 a.m. from a mobile launch platform in the Yellow Sea, off China\u2019s eastern Shandong province, and delivered the satellites into a low-Earth orbit at an altitude of about 850 kilometres, according to a company statement.<\/p>\n
The satellites were built by Guodian Gaoke for its Tianqi constellation, which now comprises 41 satellites and has achieved global coverage. The network supports internet-of-things data services and has been applied in sectors including forestry, agriculture, tourism, power generation and environmental protection, Galactic Energy said.<\/p>\n
The launch marked the sixth sea-based mission for the Ceres-1 rocket, which first flew in November 2020 from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center. It was the second privately developed Chinese rocket to reach orbit, following i-Space\u2019s SQX-1.<\/p>\n
Standing around 20 metres tall and weighing 33 tonnes at liftoff, the Ceres-1 can carry up to 300 kg of payload to a 500-km sun-synchronous orbit, or 350 kg to a 200-km low-Earth orbit. To date, 21 of its 23 missions have been successful, placing 89 commercial satellites into space, the company said.<\/p>\n
Galactic Energy said it is preparing for the debut flight of its larger Ceres-2 solid-fuel rocket from Jiuquan later this year. Other Chinese private launch firms, including Orienspace, Deep Blue Aerospace and Space Pioneer, are also planning maiden flights of new rockets.<\/p>\n
Separately, China launched a Long March-2C rocket on Thursday, placing Algeria\u2019s AlSat-3A remote-sensing satellite into orbit, according to China Great Wall Industry. The mission underscores growing space cooperation between China and Algeria, following earlier satellite launches between the two countries.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Galactic Energy carried out the first private space mission in China in 2026 on Friday, successfully launching its Ceres-1 carrier rocket from a sea-based platform and placing four commercial satellites into orbit, the company said. The solid-fuel rocket lifted off at 4:10 a.m. from a mobile launch platform in the Yellow Sea, off China\u2019s eastern […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20425,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[5725,2008,6810,135,2009,1752,6574,6811,20,5959,647],"class_list":["post-20422","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-asia","tag-ceres-1","tag-ceres-1-rocket","tag-china","tag-galactic-energy","tag-guodian-gaoke","tag-jiuquan-satellite-launch-center","tag-private-spaceflight","tag-satellite","tag-satellite-launch","tag-space-pioneer"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20422"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20422"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20422\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20425"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}