First private rocket launched from East China Sea

Orienspace, a private Chinese rocket maker, conducted the third flight of its Gravity 1 carrier rocket on Wednesday morning, marking the first time a private Chinese rocket has lifted off from the East China Sea.

The 30-meter-tall rocket blasted off at 10:54 am from a launch service ship off the coast of Shanghai and soon placed its payloads — nine satellites and one experimental device — into their preset orbits.

The mission marked the first launch by a private Chinese rocket from the East China Sea and the closest space launch to Shanghai to date.

Before the mission, the only rocket launch from the East China Sea took place in April 2022, when the State-owned China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp used a Long March 11 rocket to deploy five Earth-observation satellites.

In a statement, Orienspace said that the mission set a new national record for the combined payload weight delivered into orbit by a Chinese private rocket, but declined to disclose the exact figure, citing commercial confidentiality.

Founded in 2020 by a group of veteran researchers from State-owned space enterprises, Orienspace developed the Gravity 1 as a three-stage solid-propellant rocket with four side boosters. All of its engines are equipped with flexible swinging nozzles for attitude control.

With a liftoff weight of 405 metric tons and a liftoff thrust of 600 tons, the rocket is capable of sending payloads weighing up to 6.5 tons into low-Earth orbit or 4.2 tons into a typical sun-synchronous orbit at an altitude of 500 kilometers, according to the company.

Gravity 1 is currently the world's largest and most powerful solid-propellant launch vehicle, as well as the most capable rocket developed by a Chinese private space company.

Its liftoff weight and thrust surpass those of the European Space Agency's Vega-C, which was previously the world's most powerful solid-propellant rocket.

Gravity 1 is also the first and currently the only privately developed Chinese rocket equipped with side boosters. In addition, it has the largest payload fairing — the nose cone that houses satellites or other payloads — among China's private carrier rockets.

The rocket made its maiden flight from the Yellow Sea in January 2024, launching from a sea-based platform off the coast of Haiyang, Shandong province. The mission made Orienspace the fifth private Chinese company to successfully launch its own carrier rocket, following i-Space, Galactic Energy, Space Pioneer and LandSpace.

Its second flight took place from the same launch site in the Yellow Sea in October 2025.

Six of the nine satellites launched on Wednesday were jointly developed by Beijing MinoSpace Technology, a private satellite manufacturer, and Huantian Wisdom, a State-owned satellite operator based in Sichuan province.

The six satellites will join two previously launched optical satellites and two synthetic aperture radar satellites to form the Huantian Constellation, comprising four optical satellites and six radar satellites.

According to Beijing MinoSpace Technology, the expanded constellation will significantly improve data acquisition efficiency and spatial coverage, supporting remote-sensing applications across Southwest China in fields including land surveying and mapping, emergency response, agriculture, forestry and water conservancy.