Just saw Ace posted this as well. Honestly no clue, if I had to guess, I would say the Yuanxingzhe-1, I was thinking the Zhishenxing-1 maybe but it is supposed to launch first from Jiuquan as well.
We will probably have to wait for NOTAMs.
China's Space Program Thread II
- Thread starter Blitzo
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Just saw Ace posted this as well. Honestly no clue, if I had to guess, I would say the Yuanxingzhe-1, I was thinking the Zhishenxing-1 maybe but it is supposed to launch first from Jiuquan as well.
We will probably have to wait for NOTAMs.
Right as I posted this, some more news came out, related to the Zhishenxing-1.
The Chizhou-1 satellite will launch on the Zhishenxing-1 in the middle of 2026, around that time. We should also see the debut of the Zhishenxing-1 in first quarter of this year, it was finished from the production base and will be sent to Jiuquan soon.
(Also yes, I realize I should just call it the Pallas-1, but I use it interchangeably)
Damn…guowang constellation is really growing fast. Any idea about spacesail?
Apparently Nebula-1 (星云一号) may be launching from the Dong Fang Hang Tian Gang soon as well, possibly as soon as February, though there were conflicting rumors in December of 2025. Deep Blue Aerospace has already completed static-fire tests of both the 1st and 2nd stage propulsion systems in 2025. So this is another possiblity for the potential February debut of a new launcher.
Nebula-1 is quite modest (2 tonnes to LEO) but it seems like this will be uprated in due course; in any case, Nebula-1 is basically a reusability pathfinder for Deep Blue's planned Nebula-2 (20 tonnes to LEO class).
I'm getting indications that this may actually be the flight I was referring to prior, I guessed the wrong rocket (since we didn't have any concrete information, but I am now getting word that the Nebula-1 may be the rocket. The conflicting rumors were primarily (as far as I remember) of the rocket being damaged which would've delayed it for several months, but maybe those were not true.
Unfortunately rumors are now that the launch may have been pushed back to the 10th, although the NOTAM for the 3rd is still up. According to expectations, Guowang and Qianfan are supposed to launch at similar cadence this year, but who knows honestly. It seems we are going to at least have a launch every month of Guowang, probably two, and considering I am not seeing NOTAMs for Qianfan, I am a bit worried about how they will do it.
Ace is basically saying the flight termination system may have triggered on the Ceres 2 near the pad, shortly after launch, which makes sense with the explosion.
As I said in reply to Michael above, the Guowang's 20th group launch may have been delayed by a week, but the NOTAM is still up. Usually in these cases, from what I have seen, this means the NOTAM will come down a few days prior to launch, if it is cancelled. The rumors I am seeing are coming from travel agencies, these tend to be quite accurate.
I also want to address somewhat the recent negativity I have seen on some of the commercial launch/state launch infrastructure, industry, and other areas. (not here specifically but more broadly)
Failures are not unique to China, they happen all over the world in spaceflight, we just had two somewhat significant ones in the US actually over the past two days, related to a booster being tested at Massey for SpaceX, and Rocket Lab just had a Stage 1 tank experience failure which will push back their Neutron Flight 1. I'm not going to spend more than a paragraph on this, since this is about China's space program and not the US's, but just wanted to say failure is quite normal in certain areas, we have it too. This is not to mention India's only launch of the year ended in failure, that is besides the South Korean and Japanese rockets as well last year.
With that out of the way.
The SZ-20 crew had a press conference where they discussed the debris in a bit of detail, on the 16th, and Jack released a translation in his article. I have one prepared as well, but there are really no material differences beyond a few small words.
The CNSA is soliciting proposals for a poster design for Space Day (April 24th), it has been announced. There are various requirements on the website itself. April 24th has been an announcement date in the past, so looking forward to it.
Galactic Energy's aerospace production facility, capable of production of 10 Ceres-2 rockets per year, has been topped out, and production will start in June, this is located in Longpao, Liuhe District in Nanjing. They are working quite fast from what I've been tracking.
There were a few articles about 6G standardization which has entered a second phase of testing, and a few more about further standardization of BeiDou. The main other article I was interested in was this:
Basically a recap, for the first time in Chinese spaceflight, 2025 saw 50 commercial launches through the year, achieving 54 percent of the total space launches, and this is the first time as far as I know that a majority of space launches from China have been commercial.
It then goes on to talk about how various rockets will debut this year, the Lijian-2 with the Qingzhou cargo spacecraft, the Nebula-1, the Tianlong-3, Gravity-2, Ceres-2 (which already happened) and a few more.
Yeah seems Qianfan is having some delays and issues. Their launches have been so infrequent and inconsistent, to the point we almost forget about their existence . Lol. Guowang seems more promising and the only real viable starlink alternative this coming years (apart from Amazon Kuiper constellations obviously).
Guowang seems more natsec adjacent, I wouldn't hold my breath for it coming to the average consumer too soon.
microgravity space based 3D metals printing tested on Lihong-1 spacecraft for the first time.
you don't need 13000 sats just for natsec. It's always meant to be dual use.