According to “space”, Long March rockets, operated by the state-owned China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation, carried out two of the launches this week. The Long March 11H rocket recently launched three Shiyan-32 satellites, a vehicle of a mysterious nature that will be used to test space technologies, according to Chinese media reports. The Long March 12 also launched a group of broadband satellites for the giant “Sat Net” constellation in low Earth orbit (LEO), which is expected to eventually include 13,000 satellites, if all goes as planned.
The other two Chinese launches this week were carried out by rockets from private companies: CAS Space’s Kinetica-1 and Galactic Energy’s Ceres-1. Kinetica-1, also known as Lijian-1, sent two experimental Earth observation satellites into low Earth orbit on Saturday as planned. But Ceres-1, which launched on Sunday evening, encountered problems, with its upper stage suffering a malfunction, resulting in the loss of all three satellites on board.
However, the United States still leads the world in launches for 2025; having carried out more than 150 orbital launches so far this year. The vast majority of these launches have been carried out by one rocket, SpaceX’s Falcon 9, which has flown 143 times in 2025 already, with more than 100 of these missions dedicated to building Starlink, SpaceX’s massive and ever-growing constellation of broadband internet satellites in low Earth orbit. (Al-Youm Al-Sabea)
