Two more launches, from China and SpaceX
The global launch industry completed two more launches today. First, China placed the 23rd group of satellites for the Guowang (also called Satnet) internet satellite constellation, its Long March 8A rocket lifting off from its coastal Wenchang spaceport.
Though China’s state-run press provided no information about the number of satellites launched, earlier Long March 8A launches had routinely carried nine satellites. With this launch, the constellation now has about 184 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.
Next, SpaceX placed another 24 Starlink satellites into orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. The first stage (B1063) completed its 34th flight (44 days after its previous mission), landing on a drone ship in the Pacific. With this flight, B1063 moved past the space shuttle Atlantis to take fourth place in the rankings for the most reused launch vehicle:
39 Discovery space shuttle (retired)
36 Falcon 9 booster B1067
35 Falcon 9 booster B1071
34 Falcon 9 booster B1063
33 Atlantis space shuttle (retired)
32 Falcon 9 booster B1069 (retired)
29 Falcon 9 booster B1077
29 Falcon 9 booster B1078
The leaders in the 2026 launch race:
93 SpaceX
51 China
10 Rocket Lab (plus two suborbital HASTE launches)
10 Russia
For the third straight year SpaceX leads the entire world combined in total launches, 93 to 86.
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Will all of these satellites impact ground based astronomy?
Probably. The solution for astronomers is simple: Launch space-based telescopes of their own. Get above the crowd.
Sadly, they’d rather whine and complain, and demand everyone else bow to their demands and stop launching satellites.
Who on earth are going to be the customers for a Chinese ‘internet satellite constellation’? All down-links have to pass thru the Great Firewall before reaching users? Thousands of satellites just for domestic enjoyment? Could be done with a dozen sats in geo orbit.
But if you have global ambitions… A low latency, separate and secure comm channel available anywhere is just the thing. Hummm…
The PRC certainly has ambitions as big as the world, but it also has problems to match. It has vastly more government debt than it can possibly pay off, most of it acquired over the past two decades in order to artificially goose its GDP numbers. Financially, the PRC is a house of cards.
Its population is also aging and dying off faster than any other large nation on Earth. It is losing roughly three old people for every newborn. Birthrates are actually lower, now, than during the One-Child Policy decades. That just made each generation half the size of its predecessor. Now, each new generation is a third the size of its predecessor. Keep that up through the end of the century and the entire Han ethnicity pretty much ceases to exist.
The PRC, itself, will not last anywhere near that long. Quite possibly not long enough to finish deploying either of the “Starlink with Chinese characteristics” constellations it is now engaged in launching at a decidedly leisurely pace.