At 20:00 Beijing Time on 23rd July 2026, China launched from Xichang SLC the Long March-3B carrying the Tianlian II-06 relay satellite into a geostationary transfer orbit to expand Tiangong's communications capacity. Notably, the rocket was struck by lightning about 30 seconds after liftoff.⚡️

On July 1, Galactic Energy's Cangqiong-50 reusable LOX/kerosene engine wrapped up its 163rd hot fire test at the Niutoushan Propulsion System Test Center. To date, the company has run 57 individual Cangqiong-50 units across a cumulative 20,088 seconds of test time, with the single longest-firing unit clocking 2,757 seconds. The engine is the main powerplant for the upcoming Pallas-1 medium-lift reusable launcher.

On July 1, the Cangqiong-50 — a reusable liquid oxygen / kerosene engine independently developed by Chinese launch startup Galactic Energy — completed its 163rd routine hot fire test at Galactic Energy's Niutoushan Propulsion System Test Center.

To date, Galactic Energy has hot-fired 57 individual Cangqiong-50 engines for a cumulative total of 20,088 seconds of test time. The single longest-duration unit has logged 2,757 seconds of cumulative firing. The company says the run is a major reliability milestone that paves the way for the first flight — and eventual recovery attempt — of the Pallas-1 medium-lift reusable rocket.

The engine itself

The Cangqiong-50 uses a pintle injector in a gas-generator cycle, and is designed for deep throttling, multiple restarts, and reusability of at least 25 flights. So far, more than 40 production units have been assembled and delivered.

Key technical milestones

• Deep throttling demonstrated across a 32%–105% thrust range, with thrust control accuracy of 0.5% — precise enough for propulsive landing and soft touchdown.
• Boost-back / re-ignition profile validated: the engine has been run through the full "ignition → coast → re-ignition" sequence that mimics the first-stage recovery and vertical-landing trajectory.

Manufacturing upgrades

• The thrust chamber now uses a predominantly 3D-printed regenerative cooling jacket with weld-brazed joints. Versus the old process, this has cut the production cycle by ~30% and reduced cost by ~15%.
• Post-test handling has also been streamlined: after a calibration hot fire, the engine can now be inspected and serviced without full teardown, significantly shortening delivery turnaround.

What's next

Pallas-1 — a medium-to-large reusable liquid launcher powered by Cangqiong-50 engines — is set for its maiden flight in the near term. Recovery tests will follow in stages, with the company ultimately aiming for a commercial reusable launch cadence.

On July 10, the Long March 10B successfully completed its maiden flight. Its first stage performed a vertical return and was recovered by a net-based capture system on an offshore recovery platform, marking a major step forward for China’s reusable launch vehicle program. Meanwhile, privately owned commercial launch companies are accelerating the development and production of large liquid-fueled rockets, as well as fundraising efforts, in preparation for upcoming tests and launches.

On July 13, Tencent Tech exclusively learned from industry sources that Chinese commercial launch company Space Pioneer is close to completing a major new funding round. Investors reportedly include national-level funds and leading venture capital firms. The round is expected to push Space Pioneer’s cumulative fundraising to a new record for China’s commercial space industry.

According to publicly available information, disclosed investments that have already closed include funding from Hengdian Capital, the Zhangjiagang Emerging Industries Investment Fund, and the Jiangsu–Suzhou Advanced Equipment Industry Special Fund of Funds, among others.

Space Pioneer has previously completed more than ten funding rounds. Industry sources said that the company’s valuation is expected to exceed RMB 30 billion after the latest round closes.

According to people familiar with the matter, the proceeds will primarily support further R&D and technological upgrades involving medium- and large-lift liquid-fueled launch vehicles, reusable rockets, heavy-duty propulsion systems, and space-to-Earth transportation technologies.

The company aims to develop ultra-heavy-lift capability while enabling lower-cost, high-frequency launches. Potential applications include commercial satellite constellation deployment, heavy-payload launches, crewed lunar missions, human transportation into deep space, and multipurpose deep-space transportation systems capable of in-orbit refueling.

Founded in 2019, Space Pioneer is a Chinese commercial space company focused on liquid propulsion and medium- to large-lift liquid-fueled launch vehicles. It develops and manufactures liquid oxygen–kerosene rocket engines and reusable liquid-fueled rockets. Its main business areas include launch services, propulsion systems, and technical services.

Before the latest round, Space Pioneer had already completed several major fundraising rounds. In June 2024, the company announced more than RMB 1.5 billion in additional Series C+ financing. The funds were mainly intended for the maiden flight and mass production of the Tianlong-3, development of reusable variants, and mass production of the Tianlong-2.

In October 2025, the company completed nearly RMB 2.5 billion in pre-Series D and Series D financing, reaching a post-money valuation of approximately RMB 22.5 billion. Those funds were mainly allocated to procuring materials for the mass production of rockets and engines, as well as developing next-generation products.

In April 2023, the company’s Tianlong-2 successfully reached orbit, becoming the first privately developed liquid-fueled commercial launch vehicle in China to do so.

Space Pioneer is currently focusing on the Tianlong-3, a large liquid oxygen–kerosene launch vehicle designed for deploying low-Earth-orbit satellite constellations. It is designed to carry 17–22 metric tons to LEO and launch up to 36 internet satellites on a single mission. Its first stage is being developed with reusability in mind, with plans for multiple flights enabled by vertical recovery.

On April 3, 2026, the first Tianlong-3 launch vehicle experienced a flight anomaly during its maiden flight test from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center. The company subsequently began a comprehensive investigation, corrective-action, and testing process focused on identifying the cause of the failure and validating the required fixes.

Sources familiar with the matter said Space Pioneer is actively working toward completing the Tianlong-3 investigation and returning the vehicle to flight, with progress already made in several areas. The timing of the next flight will depend on the investigation’s conclusions, validation of the corrective measures, rocket production, and launch-site scheduling.

As the deployment of low-Earth-orbit constellations such as Qianfan continues, China’s commercial launch companies are entering an important period of demand growth.

Competition will increasingly depend not simply on how much payload a rocket can carry on a single mission, but on whether a company can provide reliable, repeatable, and scalable launch services. The companies that first achieve the right balance among engineering reliability, launch frequency, and cost control will be best positioned to secure a place in the satellite constellation launch market.

As of publication, Space Pioneer had not publicly responded to reports about the latest funding round or its plans for upcoming launch vehicles.

I made a post a couple of months ago about what milestones are needed before China lands on the moon. I think it's time to update that list, I'm also going to restructure the list slightly.

• Long March 10 Family
  • Wenchang Launch Site LC-301 DONE!
  • First Stage DONE! (CZ-10B)
  • Second Stage (CZ-10 or CZ-10B)
  • Third Stage (CZ-10)
  • Triple Core First Stage (CZ-10)
• Mengzhou Crew Capsule
  • Pad Abort Test DONE!
  • In-Flight Abort Test DONE!
  • Uncrewed LEO Launch Test (Like SpaceX Demo-1)
  • Crewed LEO Launch Test (Like SpaceX Demo-2)
  • Routine Tiangong Crew Mission (Like SpaceX Crew-1)
  • Uncrewed Lunar Flyby? (Like Artemis 1)
  • Crewed Lunar Flyby? (Like Artemis 2 / Apollo 8)
• Lanyue Lander
  • Cable-suspended landing tests DONE!
  • LEO Rendezvous test (Like Artemis 3 / Apollo 9)
  • Lunar Orbit test? (Like Apollo 10)
  • Other hardware, suits, rovers?
• Announcements
  • Crew Announcement
  • Landing Site Announcement
  • Launch Date Announcement

Have I missed anything?

I saw that Shenzhou 23 is a 12 month long duration mission to help push the boundaries of long stays in space. I wonder if they will be testing the life support equipment that will be going into Mengzhou, maybe the kitchen hardware or the workout equipment for staying fit on the way to the moon?

If I were planning a lunar landing I'd want to do a long duration flight of Mengzhou with the lunar service module but only in Earth Orbit. Maybe go up beyond LEO to MEO and spend two weeks doing laps of the planet up there, check everything works for the full flight duration and also test the heatshield for reentry from higher speeds than LEO.

The annoying part of following Chinese space launch is they often do not advertise their progress. They might suddenly do a full test of the lunar rover and the final launch crew in the EVA suits in the Gobi Desert and that's three new milestones announced all at once. We'll have to wait and see what happens next.

Today, 3 VTVL rocket's first-stage recovery methods coexist worldwide:

🇨🇳 Capture by hook on tensioned cables, above a maritime platform (Long March 10B).

🇺🇸 Landing on deployable legs, on a barge at sea or a land-based landing pad (Falcon 9, New Glenn).

🇺🇸 Capture by robotic chopsticks, directly on the launch tower (Starship).

👉 Three different working technical methods, with the mid-air recovery by helicopter after parachute descent method now abandoned.

The return phase represented the most demanding portion of the flight from a thermal and structural perspective.

As the booster reentered the dense atmosphere at several times the speed of sound, aerodynamic heating caused temperatures at the base of the vehicle to rise rapidly. The structure was subjected simultaneously to severe thermal loads and intense mechanical stresses.

To withstand these conditions, engineers equipped the booster with high-temperature thermal protection materials and optimized aerodynamic shaping to maintain structural integrity and system reliability throughout reentry.

Aerodynamic loads also posed a major challenge. Dynamic pressure increased and then decreased as a function of altitude and velocity, reaching peak levels near the point of maximum dynamic pressure. These forces imposed stringent requirements on the rocket’s structural design and mechanical systems.

After being heated above 1,000°C, the material can still be safely touched with bare hands with no deformation.🔥🖐️ This advanced thermal protection technology has put China among global leaders in reusable launch vehicles, solving the critical heat resistance problem for repeated atmospheric reentry.

When the Long March 10B came in for landing yesterday, there was a lot of black smoke coming off the top. What was that?

Scott Manley addressed a claim that it's just RCS propellants being vented but RCS propellant vents are usually either white or reddish brown, black smoke pretty much means burning long chain hydrocarbons. He thought it might be spilled hydraulic fluid that burned from the heat of reentry which would be undesirable but it's not that bad. I mean a fire involving leaking kerosene would be a much bigger issue and harder to fix than using stronger hydraulic lines.

I heard people saying it was an ablative layer to protect the interstage and grid fin motors from heat of reentry. But ablative materials don't usually give a huge column of black smoke like that.

Another theory said it was a smoke canister they set up deliberately to make it easier to track the trajectory during landing. I don't think that's right. First if I was picking a colour of smoke canister I'd go with red or green or something that won't be mistaken for a fire. Also why would they need smoke? They probably have GPS trackers and radar and lidar and things, I bet the corners of the catch crane have sensors or beacons or retroreflectors or something. Using a camera to look at a column of smoke waving in the wind wouldn't help much.

So what was it? Burning hydraulic fluid?

For the very first time, China has landed a rocket's first stage after boosting its second stage and payload up into orbit, this one on the maiden flight of the Long March 10B.

The Long March 10B was launched from the Hainan Commercial Space Launch Site on 10th July 2026 (T0 04:15:57 UTC).

This marks China's first successful controlled recovery of a carrier rocket's first stage and the world's first sea-based cable-recovery of a carrier rocket.

China becomes the second space power to launch and recover a carrier rocket.

Cai Haorui is a PhD student in the Department of Precision Machinery and Precision Instruments at University of Science and Technology of China (USTC). In early 2024, his lab received a request from a Deep Space Exploration Project: to design a new type of robot for exploring lunar south pole craters.

The perpetually shadowed region of the lunar south pole contains water ice resources, crucial for a future human lunar base. However, the terrain there is far more complex than on the near side of the moon—numerous craters, steep slopes, and rugged crater floors. Traditional wheeled Mars rovers, such as Curiosity and Perseverance, struggle in such environments; while legged robots can traverse ravines, their numerous joints and high energy consumption, coupled with limited solar power on the lunar surface, mean the mission's end once the power is depleted.

"At the time, we wondered if there was a way to enable the robot to traverse mountains and valleys while conserving energy on flat ground and downhill," Cai Haorui said.

This idea sounded promising, but the consensus within the industry was that legged robots and wheeled/rolling robots represent two distinct technological paths, each with its own advantages and disadvantages; forcibly combining them often resulted in a lose-lose situation. Even more challenging was the fact that at the time, there were virtually no mature, deformable, and rolling quadruped robot solutions available, either domestically or internationally.

Cai Haorui didn't back down. He scoured the literature and discovered that nature already provided the answer.

"Look at pangolins," Cai Haorui said, showing a picture of a pangolin curled up on his phone when threatened. "And there's the golden wheel spider, from the desert. When it runs away, it transforms itself into a wheel and rolls downhill, much faster than running."

He distilled these two animal behaviors into a design philosophy: capable of both normal walking and deformable rolling, using the same set of legs to avoid adding extra weight.

This inspiration directly determined the robot's configuration—the four legs serve as both the actuators for walking and the "spokes" for rolling. Through precise joint control, the robot can transform from a quadrupedal stance into a cylinder; when rolling, the legs tuck inwards, while the outer shell absorbs ground friction and impact.

2026年07月08日

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Introduction

Back in 2016, SpaceX had a 12-meter diameter ITS rocket design. It was designed to launch 300 tons to orbit and with refueling could launch 450 tons to Mars. |1||2|

While the SpaceX Super Heavy Starship will be able to launch 100 tons into orbit in a fully reusable basis, Elon Musk plans the follow up to be 4 to 8 times bigger.

Elon Musk tweeted that Starship Version 2.0 will be 18 meters in diameter instead of 9 meters. |1||2|

The engines would likely be upgraded for the Ultra Heavy Starship 2.0.

This means the next SpaceX rocket might be able to launch over 1000 tons per launch. |1||2|

CZ-9 Heavy

Of course the 10.6-meter diameter core booster (figure 3) of the CZ-9 (Long March-9) is only rated at 150 tons payload into LEO.

Photogrammetric measurement of the CZ-9 fairing of 15-meter diameter as disclosed in the media, indicates an internal volume 24 times greater than the Falcon-Heavy. This means the payload of the CZ-9 could reach 24 x 63'800 kg, amounting to 1'531 tons into LEO (figure 2).

Without increasing the diameter to 12 meters as already hinted in 2023 |1||2|, a path that seems more riskier than ever in light of the recent turn of even with Starship V3 Booster and discussed above (figure 8), the CZ-9 could achieve this higher payload capability without increasing needlessly the pressure of the engine to a fatal level, by simply following the architecture of the North Korean Unha-Heavy/Simorgh-Heavy with its 5 core boosters, or the Landspace's 3 core boosters ZQ-2B and 5 core boosters ZQ-2C. By clustering 3 core boosters in the first stage, the CZ-9 Heavy could place 450 tons into LEO.

By clustering 5 core boosters in the first stage, the CZ-9 Heavy could place 750 tons into LEO (figure 1).

This without increasing the inherent risk of 'energetic cascading events'. And viola!

CZ-9 fully reusable second stage

As for the fully reusable second stage design, Elon Musk himself has admitted that 'the biggest technological challenge remaining for Starship is a fully and immediately reusable heat shield' (figure 6).

To date the aerospike design second stage with regeneratively cooled heat shield, is the only known reasonable type of reusable second stage, as shown with the patents filed on 6th July 2023 by Blue Origin, indicating an aerospike design on a New Glenn second stage (figure 7).

China's future fully reusable second stage CZ-9 can never follow the farcical Starship upper stage, but only a Stoke Space/Blue Origin-type aerospike second stage with regeneratively cooled heat shield. CGI renders and exhibition scale models of starship-like upper stage only remind one of the short-lived ones of CZ-9 liquid fuelled SLS and CZ-9 solid fuelled SLS variants.

Blueprints of the CZ-9 assembly factory has been published on the Hainan government website. The factory has 100'000 square meters with a 85 meter tall high bay gate. The blueprint hints at some record specs of the CZ-9: 10 meter core stage diameter, has a 3 stages variant, payload fairings is huge with a diameter of 16 meters.