HELSINKI — China completed a third launch of Guowang megaconstellation satellites in eight days Monday, marking the first such mission to involve a commercial satellite manufacturer.
A Long March 12 rocket lifted off at 6:21 a.m. Eastern (1021 UTC; 6:21 p.m. Beijing time) Aug. 4 from the Hainan Commercial Space Launch Center. The China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) announced launch success more than an hour after liftoff.
CASC revealed the payload to be the Satellite Internet LEO Group 07 satellites, a description used for the country’s Guowang (“national net”) broadband megaconstellation project.
While the number of satellites was not revealed, and U.S. Space Force space domain awareness had not cataloged objects from the launch at time of reporting, a mission patch from the Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology (SAST)—the developer of the Long March 12—featured nine stars. In Chinese, the character for “star” is often used interchangeably with “satellite.”
A later statement from commercial satellite manufacturer and operator GalaxySpace revealed that it provided the satellites for the launch, making GalaxySpace the first private firm to supply satellites for China’s state-led Guowang constellation As with all other Guowang missions, no details nor images of the satellites were released.
GalaxySpace has previously developed stackable satellites with flexible solar wings and demonstrated Q/V/Ka‑band multiband communication payloads. Its smart manufacturing facility in Nantong is capable of producing more than 100 satellites of a 1,000 kg‑class per year, according to the company. The company previously harbored plans for its own broadband constellation. Earlier this year GalaxySpace conducted a low Earth orbit (LEO) mobile-to-satellite test.
Prior to Monday’s launch, all Guowang satellites had been developed by either the China Academy of Space Technology (CAST) under CASC, or the Shanghai Engineering Center for Microsatellites (SECM), also known as the Innovation Academy for Microsatellites of CAS (IAMCAS).
The mission was the second flight for the two-stage, 62-meter-tall Long March 12. The kerosene-fueled rocket is China’s first 3.8-meter-diameter launch vehicle. It can carry a payload of 12,000 kilograms to LEO, and 6,000 kg to sun-synchronous orbit (SSO), according to SAST. Its first launch, in November 2024, carried satellite internet technology test satellites in orbit, likely related to the Guowang project.
The rocket is the first to use the YF-100K engine, an uprated version of the YF-100 kerosene-liquid oxygen engines that power China’s new-generation liquid propellant rockets. The YF-100K notably will power the first stages of the Long March 10—a launcher being developed to send China’s astronauts to the moon before the end of the decade.
SAST appears to be developing a reusable variant using methane-lox engines. An apparent flight and splashdown test in January ended in an unknown outcome.
Monday’s launch followed two recent Guowang launches, with a Long March 6A launch on July 27 from Taiyuan, and a July 30 launch of a Long March 8A from Hainan Commercial Space Launch Center.
The cluster of missions represent an uptick in launch cadence for Guowang, a project with designs on having nearly 13,000 satellites in LEO. The near-term target for Guowang is to have 400 satellites in orbit by 2027, according to a recent presentation from Yuan Jungang, chief designer of China’s internet satellite program.
The launch was China’s 42nd orbital launch attempt of 2025, with the country apparently on course to surpass an annual national record of 68 launches, set in 2024. The previous launch was a Kuaizhou-1A launch from Xichang, southwest China, carrying a remote sensing satellite into orbit for Pakistan.