China breaks record with 3 Long March rocket launches in 19-hour stretch (video)

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China continues to make great progress on the final frontier.

The nation has just launched three Long walk rockets in less than 19 hours, setting a new national mark for liftoff rate.

Additionally, the trio brought China’s orbital launch count for 2025 to 83, extending another record. The previous annual record for the country, set last year, was 68 years old. (However, eighty-three is not a world record; EspaceX alone launched 159 orbital missions in 2025.)

The burst began Monday, December 8 at 5:11 p.m. EST (10:11 p.m. GMT), when a Long March 6A rocket took off from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center in northern China. This mission successfully sent a batch of broadband satellites to low earth orbit for the Guowang (“national network”) megaconstellation.

Then, at 10:41 p.m. EST Monday (03:41 GMT Tuesday, Dec. 9), the mysterious Yaogan 47 spacecraft took off atop a Long March 4B from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the Gobi Desert. Yaogan 47 is a classified satellite that will be used by the Chinese military.

The tripleheader ended at 10:08 a.m. EST (15:08 GMT) on Tuesday with the launch of another classified ad. satelliteknown as TJSW-22, during a long 3B march from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in western China.

All three launches took place on Tuesday Beijing time, as noted by the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC), the state-owned entity that operates the Long March family of rockets.

“This is the third successful launch today of Chinese Long March rockets, setting a new record of three launches in one day,” CASC officials said in a statement. statement Tuesdayreferring to the takeoff of TJSW-22 (in Mandarin; Google translation).

A total of five orbital launches took place in the 24 hours beginning with liftoff from Guowang on Monday. The other two were SpaceX Falcon 9 missions – one Monday evening flight launched a batch of the company’s Starlink satellites and the Launch of NROL-77 for the United States National Reconnaissance Office occurred Tuesday afternoon.

However, this is not a 24-hour record: between April 28 and 29 of this year, six different rockets launched into orbit in just 18 hours – a Long March 5B, two Falcon 9s, a United Launch Alliance Atlas Van Arianespace Vega C and Alpha, a vehicle built and operated by the Texas company Firefly Aerospace. All except Alpha succeeded.