Since the second half of this year, China's commercial rocket launches have become increasingly frequent, market demand has scaled up, and industrial development has gone global. As these positive signals light up simultaneously, the vision of the stars and sea is turning into a profitable commercial reality. Along with the continuous release of policy dividends, the outline of commercial spaceflight as a "good business" is becoming increasingly clear.
High-Frequency Launches Take Another Step Forward
On September 15, Lanjian Aerospace's Zhuque-2 Improved Y7 executed the networking launch mission for the Qianfan constellation. This marked the first time a Chinese private commercial spaceflight enterprise undertook a large-scale networking mission for a giant satellite internet constellation. Just 29 days later, on October 14, Zhuque-2 Y4 lifted off again, precisely delivering a total of 10 satellites for two clients, Adaspace and Lanta Intelligent Optical Transmission, into their predetermined orbits.
Data shows that in the first three quarters of this year, China carried out a total of 70 rocket launches, an increase of about 19% from 59 in the same period last year, setting a new record for the same period in history; in September alone, 10 launches were completed, all of which were successful.
If "one rocket, multiple satellites" reflects the continuous maturation of private liquid-fueled rockets in launch efficiency and mission scheduling, then the intensive and stable launches further confirm that the trend of "high-frequency launches and scaled-up launch capacity" in commercial spaceflight is gradually materializing.
"In this mission, given the large number of satellites belonging to different clients and the significant differences in their weight, shape, and size, we took a series of measures to ensure rapid service delivery," a person in charge from Lanjian Aerospace told reporters.
On the one hand, fully leveraging the advantages of the Zhuque-2 Improved version's large payload capacity and sufficient fairing envelope space, the satellites were installed on various surfaces of the square load-bearing cylinder according to their types. The installation and separation sequences were carefully designed to avoid mutual interference among the satellites, achieving the orderly deployment and separation of "rideshare satellites." On the other hand, teams were scientifically and orderly allocated to carry out rolling work, giving full play to the advantages of ample satellite and rocket preparation sites and well-equipped facilities. Standardized operations were implemented, quality management was strengthened, and preparations for multiple launches were carried out simultaneously, thereby ensuring stable high-frequency launches.
In other words, Lanjian Aerospace does not wait until the previous rocket is launched before initiating the next mission. Instead, it advances the production, testing, and launch preparations for different launches simultaneously, reducing waiting times and resource idleness between missions.
Behind the increased launch frequency is the coordinated effort of multiple links, including satellite-rocket adaptation, final assembly and testing, and launch site support. In this regard, the United States has already formed a complete commercial closed loop centered around launch sites, launch pads, TT&C networks, supply chains, and recovery systems.
China is also making up for this link. From the Hainan Commercial Spacecraft Launch Site coming into operation, to the construction of the Jiuquan Dongfeng Commercial Space Innovation Pilot Zone, and then to commercial launch pads along with the gradually forming reusable factories and sea-based recovery systems, "being able to launch" is turning into "high-frequency launching." However, the maturity of the system is still climbing. Among them, the Hainan Commercial Spacecraft Launch Site has successfully completed 23 launches in nearly two years since its completion. The second-phase project has started joint exercises and will form launch capacity within the year. The transfer and launch will take as short as 3 days, and the future comprehensive annual launch capacity will exceed 60 times.
Demand and Technological Iteration Open Up New Industrial Space
When launching is no longer a scarce opportunity that requires long-term waiting, but a service that can be planned in advance and purchased on demand, more commercial projects that were previously difficult to carry out due to launch costs and time constraints will also have the opportunity to truly enter space.
At the end of last year, China submitted frequency and orbit applications for a total of over 203,000 satellites to the International Telecommunication Union, covering 14 medium and low Earth orbit constellations. As China's first giant commercial low Earth orbit constellation to officially enter the networking stage, the Qianfan Constellation plans to deploy over 15,000 satellites in total. By the end of this year, it will complete the first phase of 324 satellites for networking, officially providing services globally and starting commercial operations. The China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation stated that its planned GW Constellation intends to deploy 12,992 satellites, completing the deployment of about 1,300 satellites by the end of 2029, and completing the full networking by 2035. Faced with such massive demand, the core issue for China's commercial spaceflight is no longer "whether there is a market," but "whether capacity matching can be completed within the window period."
Policy dividends are being released simultaneously. The country is promoting the entry of low Earth orbit satellite constellations into the commercial development stage in a more open, prudent, yet more proactive manner, enabling China's commercial spaceflight to steadily move towards a "golden opportunity period" of standardization, commercialization, and ecological development.
At the end of August this year, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology approved Zhejiang Shikong Daoyu Technology Co., Ltd. to carry out commercial trials for satellite IoT business, with a trial period of two years. In the view of Wang Yang, CEO of Shikong Daoyu, this means the company can officially enter a new stage of carrying out large-scale commercial applications in accordance with the law and regulations, providing satellite IoT connection services to global users. Simply put, signing commercial contracts and collecting service fees will now be "fully justified."
Currently, Shikong Daoyu has a total of 64 satellites in orbit, achieving global communication coverage except for the North and South Poles. The constellation system has the capability of 340 million communications per day and can support 20 million users globally. They are also continuing to advance networking construction. By the end of the year, the first phase of 72 satellites will be deployed. At that time, the constellation system will have an average daily communication capacity of 450 million and enter the stage of true network operation.
This year is also regarded by the industry as the year of explosive growth for computing power "going to space." In just the past month, among the satellites successfully launched in China, multiple satellites such as Chaozhisuan-1, Pengcheng First Satellite, and Zhuzhou Space Star PIESAT-2 13-16 were all equipped with "computing power brains." The 8 Adaspace satellites launched by Lanjian Aerospace on October 14 belong to the world's first space computing constellation—the Xingsuan plan. With the addition of these 8 satellites, the Xingsuan constellation completed its first networking, and the total on-orbit computing power reached 50P, equivalent to performing 500 quadrillion operations per second in space.
6G is becoming an important era opportunity under the commercial spaceflight umbrella. The 15th Five-Year Plan for the Development of the Information and Communication Industry issued by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology in September proposed tackling key 6G technologies. It requires strengthening key network technologies such as network-native AI, integration of communication, sensing, and intelligent computing, token communication, and data services, as well as tackling key wireless communication technologies such as ultra-large-scale antennas, integrated communication and sensing, space-ground integration, AI, energy saving, coordinated sharing of high, medium, and low orbit spectrums, and space-ground spectrum sharing.
In the 5G era, satellites served more as a supplementary means, while the core feature of 6G is space-ground integrated omnidomain communication, deeply integrating satellite networks with terrestrial cellular networks to achieve omnidomain and all-time connectivity.
Wang Yang regards this as a precious opportunity and stated that, on the basis of the first-phase constellation networking and the launch of large-scale services, Shikong Daoyu is simultaneously accelerating the research on cutting-edge 6G satellite communication technologies. Ground tests based on the 3GPP IoT NTN satellite IoT standard have been completed, and related R&D work is advancing steadily, which will accelerate the R&D and commercialization process of 6G satellite communication technologies.
New "Going Global" Models Frequently Unlocked
Commercial spaceflight is "naturally" a global business. With the expansion of industrial scale and the maturation of capabilities, China's commercial spaceflight has also entered the main track of global competition.
From a global perspective, the market size continues to expand and grow at a high speed. Data shows that in 2025, the global commercial spaceflight market size exceeded 700 billion US dollars, a year-on-year growth of about 22%, among which the low Earth orbit communication satellite market grew particularly rapidly.
"Currently, the global commercial spaceflight industrial landscape is accelerating its restructuring, and the globalization of low Earth orbit satellite services has become the core trend of space economy development. The space competition among countries has also shifted from a single technology contest to a comprehensive game of industrial systems and international service capabilities," Kong Dejian, Associate Professor at the International Law School of China University of Political Science and Law, told reporters.
The overseas practices of Chinese commercial spaceflight enterprises are "blooming in multiple points." For example, the Xiaolongxing shared satellite plan, a generalized intelligent satellite platform system led by China, completed the signing of multi-national payload parties at the Pujiang Innovation Forum in September this year, helping developing countries acquire satellite remote sensing capabilities at a lower cost.
Sino-African remote sensing cooperation is currently the largest and most systematic sector in the overseas expansion of China's commercial spaceflight. As of September this year, the Land Satellite Remote Sensing Application Center of the Ministry of Natural Resources has signed agreements with 20 African countries and built 15 natural resource satellite remote sensing cloud service platform nodes, promoting Sino-African space cooperation from "aid" to "autonomy."
Not only continuously deploying whole satellite exports, Chinese enterprises have also unlocked new overseas models such as "selling data" and "selling capabilities." For example, the Yinhe Aerospace Lingzhi-09 Thailand CubeSat project not only undertakes agricultural monitoring and ecological protection remote sensing data collection tasks to provide services, but also helps Thailand's space sector upgrade from "using satellites" to "understanding satellites" through centralized training in China for the Thai technical team and on-site teaching in Thailand by the Chinese team, truly achieving the full-chain capability output of "satellites, ground, and talents."
Currently, the only domestic civil and commercial rocket that has achieved overseas satellite piggyback launches—Zhongke Yuhang's Lijian-1—has completed international launch orders for multiple countries including Oman, Mexico, and Pakistan; Hangtian Yuxing has built a global network of over 60 ground stations, providing services such as rocket launch TT&C, satellite TT&C, space collision warning, and space debris cleanup. As of August 2026, it has cumulatively served 684 satellites and rockets.
With consolidated launch capabilities, broadened application scenarios, and accelerated globalization steps, the triple momentum is driving China's commercial spaceflight from engineering verification to commercial realization. However, the competition for frequency and orbit resources, the polishing of core supply chains, and the construction of commercial profit models remain realistic challenges for China's commercial spaceflight to "fly to space." The "good business" of commercial spaceflight awaits the joint exploration of the industry.
Author | Qi Xu
Editor | Wu Lilin
Art Editor | Ma Liya Supervisor | Lian Xiaodong