China simply broke its single-year launch report — and with practically two months left in 2025.
Four Chinese rockets lifted off over the weekend, taking the nation’s complete variety of orbital missions this 12 months to 72. The earlier report, set final 12 months, was 68.
On Saturday afternoon (Nov. 8) U.S. Eastern time, a Long March 11H lofted three Shiyan-32 satellites, mysterious craft that will be used to test space-based technologies, according to Chinese media reports.
Then, on Sunday night time (Nov. 9), a Long March 12 launched a batch of broadband satellites for the SatNet megaconstellation in low Earth orbit (LEO), which can ultimately harbor 13,000 satellites, if all goes in accordance with plan.
The different two Chinese launches this weekend had been carried out by personal rockets — CAS Space’s Kinetica-1 and Galactic Energy’s Ceres-1.
The Kinetica-1, also called Lijian-1, despatched two Earth-observing take a look at satellites to LEO on Saturday as deliberate. But Ceres-1, which launched on Sunday night time, had issues: Its higher stage suffered an anomaly, ensuing within the lack of all three satellites on board.
However, China shouldn’t be the worldwide launch chief in 2025; that distinction goes to the United States, which has carried out more than 150 orbital liftoffs up to now this 12 months.
The overwhelming majority of these launches have been carried out by a single rocket — SpaceX’s Falcon 9, which has flown 143 instances in 2025 already. More than 100 of these missions have been dedicated to constructing out Starlink, SpaceX’s enormous and ever-growing broadband constellation in LEO.