China launches nine more Guowang satellites
At almost the same time that SpaceX was doing two launches last night from opposite coasts, China was launching another nine satellites for its Guowang (Satnet) constellation, its Long March 12 rocket lifting off from its coastal Wenchang spaceport.
Though China’s state run press made no mention of the number of satellites in the payload, all previous Long March 12 launches for this constellation have carried nine satellites. With this launch, the constellation now has about 193 satellites in orbit, out of a planned constellation of 13,000. The goal this year is to launch 310, followed by 900 in ’27, and 3,600 each year thereafter.
The leaders in the 2026 launch race:
99 SpaceX
53 China
11 Rocket Lab (plus two suborbital HASTE launches)
10 Russia
For the third straight year SpaceX leads the entire world combined in total launches, 99 to 90.
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With all due respect to the PRC space lords, the ambitions for Guowang deployments look completely whack-a-doodle. According to Wikipedia, the Guowang constellation currently consists of 186 sats launched starting in late 2024. But there are also an unexplained clutch of 30 “related” sats that have been launched starting in late 2023.
It’s already mid-August and Guowang has, at most, 216 birds on-orbit, only, at most, 59 of which have been launched thus far this year. Meeting the announced goal for this year would require launching 251 more sats – the capacity of 28 more Long March 12s, or equivalent – by year’s-end. That’s a more than six-per-month needed clip.
It would likely require more than that. Long March 12 has only flown six missions for the Guowang constellation deployment to-date, carrying just 54 of the 216 sats currently deployed – 27 in 2025 and 27 more thus far this year. The rest have been lofted by a combination of Long March 5Bs, Long March 6As and Long March 8As up to this point in 2026. These rockets can carry, respectively, 10, 5 and 9 Guowang sats per launch.
None of these rockets are yet available in reusable trim, though there are two versions of the Long March 12 – the 12A and 12B – being developed that are to feature recoverable and reusable booster stages. The LM 12A is the same size as the expendable LM 12 but powered by methalox rather than kerolox. The less dense fuel in same-size tankage combined with other items needed to allow booster recovery will significantly reduce the LM 12A’s throw weight to Guowang deployment orbits compared to the 10 – 12 metric tons its expendable sibling can manage. The LM 12A can lose capacity per launch but make it up in greater volume of launches once recovery and refurbishment are worked out one presumes. The LM 12A has flown once, but the attempt to recover the booster failed.
The LM 12B is a bigger rocket with bigger tanks and more engines. The idea, one presumes, is to produce a reusable booster stage that can support launch of payloads equivalent to the expendable LM 12.
One can only wish the PRC well in its efforts to produce some form of partially-reusable LM 12. The other expendable rocket on the PRC roster that can also launch nine Guowang sats per mission is the LM 8A. This rocket has become notorious for its upper stages, which have suffered post-sat-deployment explosions on-orbit on several occasions producing significant amounts of space debris in each case. The fewer of those used, the better.
Can the PRC launch the equivalent of 28 more LM 12s during what remains of 2026? Maybe. The PRC does tend to finish out its launch years in a flurry. Even so, there is legitimate room for doubt that the PRC can launch four times more Guowang sats in the last 4.5 months of the year than it has launched in the first 7.5.
And then we come to the notional 900 sat deployments slated for next year. Hoo boy! That’s the equivalent of 100 LM 12/LM 8A rockets – more rockets just for Guowang deployments than the PRC has ever launched in a single year for all purposes. I don’t think so.
Which also makes notionally quadrupling that rate of launch in subsequent years a complete pipedream. Thing is, even with reusable booster stages, one still has to manufacture a new 2nd stage for each mission. The only outfit to ever do that at even a low-three-figures-per-year clip is SpaceX. Do I fancy the ability of the PRC to produce more than 20 times as many expendable 2nd stages in a single year as SpaceX by 2028? I do not.
And there is, of course, the little matter of how fast the PRC can do pad turnarounds. It doesn’t show any obvious signs of being able to even match SpaceX in that respect either, never mind going to multiples of current SpaceX practicum.
With some truly improbable launch calisthenics, the PRC might manage to have enough of a Guowang constellation on-orbit by year’s end to provide a level of service somewhat below that of SpaceX’s erstwhile Starlink “It’s Better than Nothing Beta” days. But building out beyond that is looking to be, at best, a quite protracted process. It’s easily possible – even likely – that the PRC rattles to pieces as a nation-state well before getting anywhere near 13,000 Guowang sats on-orbit.
Thus their penchant for having umpteen different outfits—besides, they don’t need as many as Starlink, as they seek to sell to folks Elon wouldn’t touch.
Galileo is what is whack….American GPS wasn’t good enough and stuck in their crop.
That wasted money should have been spent on winged RLV development.
If you want an endogenous space capability of your own that doesn’t resemble USAF or SpaceX…that’s how you make your own rocket.
I get GLONASS and mil-sats of every stripe….I could see China offering free, Starlink adjacent internet to poison Musk’s well.
Europe’s stupidity has no excuse.
I’m almost afraid to ask, but how would winged RLVs be better than what SpaceX, Blue Origin, and China are doing?
In order to try to “poison Musk’s well” by offering free LEO broadband, the PRC would first have to have some decent LEO broadband to offer. As I noted above, that seems unlikely to eventuate for quite some time, if ever. Then there’s the fact that the PRC has even more debt outstanding than does the US and against an economy which has plateaued. The PRC is in no financial condition to be offering free anything to anyone.
Besides, the PRC wants Starlink gone. Bankrupting Musk would not achieve that. The physical assets would remain and would simply pass to new owners in receivership.
To Tom,
The Euros want their own mark on things….they may look to copy Elon at the last–but some of them at least have enough pride to where they want to strike out on their own–as in SpaceLiner.
They chafe like we did post-shuttle/pre-Dragon.
But they are a fractious lot, and so nothing ever comes of anything.
The most effective space advocate (politically) before Elon was Glushko.
He outlived the other Chief Designers, and made the Soviet space effort largely a one-man show. China won’t leave someone like him alone though.
They have super-villain zeal, but don’t have the von Braun style Great Man.
I still rank Buran ahead of Starship at the moment–but that could soon change.
Imagine if Khrushchev had lasted as long as Brezhnev had, with Afanasyev supporting him….with a relaxed New Economic Policy in place of war communism.
The Soviet Union was the only nation where space advocates had any real clout. In the US, LeMay and Rickover got blank checks longer than Elon ever did.
Space advocates either face stingy politicians or VC scum…or face Greens who want us in the muck.
America deserves better.