China breaks its single-year launch record with weekend flurry
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CAS Space’s Kinetica-1 rocket launches two technical experiment satellites from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center on November 9, 2025. | Credit: CCTV
China just broke its single-year launch record – and there are almost two months left in 2025.
Four Chinese rockets took off this weekend, bringing the country’s total number of orbital missions this year to 72. The previous record, set last year, was 68 years old.
Two of this weekend’s launches were carried out by Long walk rockets, venerable vehicles operated by the state-owned China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation.
On Saturday afternoon (November 8), US Eastern Time, an 11H Long March launched three Shiyan-32 satellites, a mysterious craft that will be used to test space technologies, according to Chinese media reports.
Then, on Sunday evening (November 9), a Long March 12 launched a batch of broadband satellites for the SatNet megaconstellation in low earth orbit (LEO), which will ultimately house 13,000 satellites, if all goes as planned.
The other two Chinese launches this weekend were carried out by private rockets: Kinetica-1 from CAS Space and Ceres-1 from Galactic Energy.
Kinetica-1, also known as Lijian-1, sent two Earth observation test satellites to LEO on Saturday, as planned. But Ceres-1, launched Sunday evening, experienced problems: its upper stage suffered an anomaly, causing the loss of three satellites on board.
However, China is not the world leader in launches in 2025; that distinction goes to the United States, which led more than 150 orbital takeoffs so far this year.
The vast majority of these launches were carried out by a single rocket: that of SpaceX. Falcon 9, which has already flown 143 times in 2025. More than 100 of these missions have been dedicated to building Star linkSpaceX’s huge and ever-growing broadband constellation in LEO.
