Chinese company iSpace completes first commercial satellite launch

The Chinese company iSpace has launched two satellites into orbit. It is the first commercial company from Chinese soil to independently launch a rocket and orbit satellites.

The company’s rocket lifted off from the Jiuquan launch site in the Gobi Desert on Thursday morning. It was the startup’s first successful mission, and the first successful launch of the SQX-1 Y1 rocket, also known as the Hyperbola-1. That is a four-stage rocket that can send a payload of 260 kilos into space. The first three stages use solid fuel, the fourth stage uses liquid.

The company managed to bring two satellites into space into low Earth orbit. It involved an amateur radio satellite and an experimental satellite of the China Central Television television station. The third stage of the rocket also contained three small experiments. It is the first commercial rocket from a Chinese company to launch satellites into orbit. There are multiple companies working on that right now, such as Landspace and OneSpace, but their launches failed earlier this year and last year.

iSpace, or Beijing Interstellar Glory Space Technology Ltd., has raised more than a hundred million euros in private investments in recent years from tech giant Baidu, among others. It’s not the company’s first launch; last year it managed to launch a predecessor of the current rocket. However, this was a suborbital flight.