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HELSINKI — China added to its Guowang national broadband megaconstellation Wednesday with the 600th Long March rocket launch, marking a milestone in the country’s accelerating spaceflight cadence.
A Long March 8A rocket lifted off at 9:33 p.m. Eastern, Oct. 15 (0133 UTC, Oct. 16) from launch pad 1 at the Hainan Commercial Space Launch Center on Hainan island, south China. The China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) announced the success of the launch via its Chinese language social media channels, revealing the previously undisclosed payload to be the 12th group of satellite internet satellites.
CASC’s China Academy of Space Technology (CAST), which has developed both small and large satellite buses for the constellation, provided the satellites for the mission. While the number of satellites launched was not revealed, the three previous Long March 8A launches each carried nine Guowang satellites.
The national Guowang project, led by the state-owned China SatNet, will consist of nearly 13,000 satellites in low Earth orbit and is part of China’s response to Starlink, both commercially and strategically. The near-term target for Guowang is to have 400 satellites in orbit by 2027. There will be 95 satellites in orbit for the operational Guowang project if and when it is confirmed—likely first via U.S. Space Force space domain awareness tracking—that nine satellites were launched on the rocket. There are additional test satellites in orbit linked to the project from a number of separate launches.
The Long March 8A is a variant of the standard Long March 8, keeping its side boosters and utilizing upgraded hydrogen-liquid oxygen YF-75H engines on its second stage. It also features a more voluminous 5.2-meter-diameter fairing to encapsulate batches of satellites.
The rocket appears to be produced primarily to support Guowang, with efforts including upping production of its YF-100 kerosene-lox engines at new manufacturing facilities. All four launches of the Long March 8A so far have carried batches of Guowang satellites.
Launch milestone highlights China’s accelerating launch rate
The new milestone illustrates the rapid increase in Chinese launch cadence. The first launch, using the Long March 1, took place April 24, 1970, successfully sending the Dongfanghong-1 satellite into orbit.
It took until June 2007—or 37 years—for China to complete the launch of its first 100 Long March rockets, when a Long March 3A launched Xinnuo-3. The 200th launch followed seven and a half years later, in December 2014. The 300th launch was conducted three and a half years later, in March 2019, and the 400th was reached Dec. 10, 2021 with the Long March 4B launch of the Shijian-06 (05) group, some two years and nine months later. The 500th launch took place just two years later, Dec. 10, 2023, using a Long March 2D to launch a group of Yaogan-39 series satellites. China has now hit the 600th launch milestone 22 months later. This increase in launch rate has also taken place as a commercial launch sector grows.
Most of these launches have used the hypergolic Long March 2, 3 and 4 rockets, while new, hydrogen-liquid oxygen and kerosene-LOX Long March 5, 6, 7 and 8 rockets began coming online in the mid-2010s. The new Long March 10 is being developed to take Chinese astronauts to the moon, while the super heavy-lift Long March 9 is also in development. The first reusable Long March rocket could be the Long March 12A, which could launch before the end of the year.
Wednesday’s mission was China’s 62nd orbital launch of 2025, meaning the country is closing in on a new national launch record for a calendar year. That record is currently 68, set in 2024.
Expected upcoming launch activity includes a Long March 6A rocket due to launch from Taiyuan, north China, early Friday (Oct. 17), followed by a possible Lijian-1 (Kinetica-1) solid rocket from Jiuquan, northwest China, late Oct. 18 Eastern. A Long March 5 rocket is scheduled to launch from Wenchang Oct. 22, while a Long March 3B rocket could launch from Xichang, southwest China, around Oct. 26. While airspace closure notices indicate the expected launches, no payloads have been publicly disclosed ahead of the missions.
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