China Has Flown 70 Orbital Launches in 2026 and Needs 31 in Q4 to Pass 100
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China Has Flown 70 Orbital Launches in 2026 and Needs 31 in Q4 to Pass 100
Q3 closed at 26 launches, matching Q2; reaching 101 means a fourth quarter about 19% busier than either, with three commercial debuts and a crewed flight on the list.
China has made 70 orbital launch attempts in 2026 and would need at least 31 in the fourth quarter to pass 100 for the year, according to a September count by SpaceNews.
The tally closed September with two launches in two days: Guowang group 26 on September 23 and the fourth Yaogan-40 group on September 24.
The quarterly count: 18, 26, 26
SpaceNews puts Q1 at 18 launches, Q2 at 26 and Q3 at 26. Those sum to 70. A fourth quarter of 31 would reach 101, which is 5 launches above Q3's pace, or roughly 10.3 a month against 8.7.
The count is attempts, not successes; SpaceNews describes the figure as orbital attempts.
- Q118 launches
- Q226 launches
- Q326 launches
- Q4 needed31 launches
Source: SpaceNews, accessed 2026-10-02; Q4 is the minimum needed to pass 100, not a forecast
Guowang and Yaogan-40 in September
A Long March 8A lifted off at 1332 UTC on September 23 from the Hainan commercial spacecraft launch site with the 26th group for Guowang, China's national low Earth orbit internet project. SpaceNews says US Space Force tracking placed the satellites in roughly circular orbits at 1,100 km, inclined 50 degrees. The constellation is planned at about 13,000 satellites.
Less than a day later a Long March 6A flew from Taiyuan at 0846 UTC with the Yaogan-40 04 group. Xinhua says the satellites will carry out "electromagnetic environment detection and related technical tests", and calls it the 670th mission of the Long March family.
Chinese launchers also flew four different rockets from three sites within 48 hours on September 15 and 16, per SpaceNews.
What is on the Q4 manifest
| Mission | Detail from SpaceNews |
|---|---|
| Shenzhou-24 | November, Long March 2F from Jiuquan, possibly with a Pakistani payload specialist |
| Gravity-2 | Orienspace commercial debut |
| Hyperbola-3 | iSpace debut, with a first-stage recovery attempt |
| Zhihang-1 | Zenk Space debut |
| Other | More Guowang and Qianfan launches, a Fengxing-1 transfer vehicle candidate, space computing payloads, a Haolong reusable spaceplane cargo flight with no set date |
Three commercial debuts in one quarter matter for the arithmetic. New rockets slip more often than a Long March 8A flying its 26th Guowang group, so the 31 depends on how many of them leave the pad before December 31.
What would change the read
A launch count measures events, not capacity, much as the order total in our report on Agility's Digit 5 counts commitments rather than robots working. SpaceNews does not give mass to orbit for the quarter, and a Guowang batch is not the same payload as a crewed Shenzhou flight.
The commercial side of orbit looks different: Hubble Network raised $200 million with six satellites flying. The test for China's figure is the November manifest. If Hyperbola-3 and Gravity-2 both slip into 2027, Q4 needs 31 from the established rockets alone.
Sources
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