CASC

On February 11, 2026, CASC conducts a successful low-altitude flight test of the Long March 10 alongside a max-dynamic-pressure abort test of the Mengzhou crewed spacecraft at Wenchang - a pivotal step toward landing astronauts on the Moon before 2030.

On May 11, 2026, a Long March 7 Y11 rocket launches the Tianzhou 10 cargo spacecraft from Wenchang, delivering approximately 7 tonnes of supplies, experiments, and equipment to the Tiangong space station, where it docks at 13:11 Beijing Time.

On May 24, 2026, a Long March 2F lifts off from Jiuquan carrying commander Zhu Yangzhu, Zhang Zhiyuan, and Li Jiaying - China's first astronaut from Hong Kong - on the 17th crewed Chinese spaceflight and the 11th flight to the Chinese Space Station. The mission is China's first where one crew member is assigned to a yearlong in-orbit stay.

On June 1, 2026, CASC's new partially reusable Long March 12B lifts off from the Dongfeng Commercial Aerospace Innovation Test Zone at Jiuquan and successfully delivers two Qianfan broadband satellites to orbit on its maiden mission. The 72-meter, 4.37-meter-diameter vehicle uses nine YF-102R kerolox engines on its first stage and is rated for 20 tonnes to LEO; first-stage propulsive recovery is planned for a later test.

On June 4, 2026, a Long March 6A Y25 lofts 18 Qianfan satellites from Taiyuan, marking the 648th flight mission of the Long March series carrier rockets.

On June 11, 2026, a Long March 5 (Y11) lifts off from Wenchang carrying the TJS-25 communications-technology-validation satellite to geosynchronous transfer orbit, marking the 650th launch of the Long March series - reached just ~8 months after the 600th, underscoring the family's accelerating cadence.

On June 23, 2026, a Long March 7A lifts off from Wenchang at 02:10 UTC and places the classified TJSW-26A (Communication Technology Experimental Satellite-26A) into geostationary transfer orbit. It is the vehicle's 16th flight and its first since a January 2026 third-stage propulsion failure grounded both the Long March 7A and its sibling Long March 3B (which returned to flight June 16), confirming CASC has resolved the upper-stage fault. The mission is the 653rd launch of the Long March series.

CASC/CNSA's Tianwen-2 spacecraft arrives at the near-Earth quasi-satellite asteroid (469219) Kamo'oalewa on July 6, 2026, completing a roughly 400-day, 1-billion-kilometer cruise, and begins a survey campaign that runs through about April 2027. First imagery, captured from about 20 km away on July 2, 2026, showed the asteroid to be barely 20 m across - about half the size ground telescopes had estimated - and complicated the leading theory that it is lunar-origin debris. The mission will attempt both anchor-and-attach and touch-and-go sampling - the first anchor-and-attach attempt at an asteroid - aiming to collect roughly 200-1,000 g of regolith no later than the end of April 2027, after which the sample capsule separates on November 29, 2027 and lands near Jiuquan in the Gobi Desert while the spacecraft continues on to main-belt comet 311P/PanSTARRS.

On July 10, 2026, CASC flew the maiden mission of the Long March 10B from the Hainan Commercial Space Launch Site, delivering an undisclosed satellite to orbit and - about 11 minutes after liftoff - recovering the vehicle's first stage on a sea-based platform via a net-capture system, using four 'landing hooks' to catch the net. It was China's first-ever controlled recovery of an orbital launch vehicle's first stage, making China the second country after the United States to master booster recovery and the first to do so with a net-capture technique. The 63-meter, 5-meter-diameter single-stick 10B (a partially reusable cargo/LEO variant of the crewed Long March 10) has seven YF-100K kerolox first-stage engines and lifts ~16 tonnes to LEO in reusable mode; CASC plans to reflight the recovered booster before the end of 2026.

On July 23, 2026, a Long March 3B lifted off from Xichang carrying a communications relay satellite to geostationary transfer orbit and, despite being struck by lightning shortly after liftoff, delivered its payload successfully - underscoring the resilience and continued high cadence of the Long March fleet as CASC pushed past its 655th cumulative series launch (reached July 4) on the way to a targeted 100-plus launches in 2026.

The Long March 5 Y14 carrier rocket arrives at the Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site on July 13, 2026, shipped from production and port facilities in Tianjin and Shanghai, and begins assembly and testing alongside the Chang'e-7 lunar south-pole probe (delivered to the site in April 2026) ahead of a launch targeted for late August 2026.

On July 29, 2026 at 7:50 p.m. Beijing Time, a Long March 7A lifts off from the Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site carrying the Tianlian III-01 data-relay satellite - which will boost telemetry, tracking, and command throughput between Tiangong, crewed and cargo spacecraft, and Earth-based ground stations - into its preset orbit. The mission marks the 50th launch conducted from Wenchang since the site began operations in 2016.

On July 30, 2026 at 9:00 a.m. Beijing Time, a modified Long March 6 lifts off from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center carrying the TJSW-27A and TJSW-27B communication-technology experimental satellites into their planned orbits - the 660th cumulative flight of the Long March carrier rocket series.

On August 4, 2026 at 4:52 p.m. Beijing Time, a Long March 8A lifts off from Commercial Launch Pad 1 at the Wenchang Commercial Space Launch Site carrying nine satellites - the 23rd batch for the state-backed GuoWang broadband constellation - into orbit. It is the 10th flight of the Long March 8A variant, the 17th of the Long March 8 series, and the 661st cumulative launch of the Long March family.

A Long March 7A breaks apart in a fireball about 85 seconds after liftoff from Wenchang on August 10, 2026, during the joint burn of its first stage and four boosters. Xinhua confirms the failure roughly three hours later, citing a flight anomaly under investigation; the payload, reported as the Zhongxing-4B communications satellite, is lost with the rocket over the South China Sea. It is only the Long March 7A's second failure ever - after its March 2020 maiden flight, itself traced to LOX cavitation in a booster feed line during the same joint-burn phase - and China's fourth orbital launch failure of 2026 (following a January 17 Long March 3B loss and an April Tianlong-3 failure from a different operator). Unlike the January Long March 3B failure, which was a third-stage cryogenic-engine fault, this one implicates the YF-100 kerolox engine shared across the first stage and boosters of the Long March 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, and 12 families; observers flagged a risk that the resulting investigation could push the Chang'e-7 launch (which flies on a YF-100-boosted Long March 5) past its planned window.

On August 13, 2026, a Long March 5B lifts off from Wenchang carrying an eighth batch of ten GuoWang broadband satellites (with a Yuanzheng-2 upper stage) to orbit, CASC's first successful mission since the August 10 Long March 7A failure just three days earlier. The success does not itself confirm the YF-100 engine investigation is closed, but it shows CASC kept other Long March variants flying while that investigation continues, a modest positive signal for the Long March 5 that is due to carry Chang'e-7 later in the month.

On August 16, 2026 at 12:10 p.m. Beijing Time, a Long March 12 lifts off from Commercial Launch Pad 2 at the Wenchang Commercial Space Launch Site carrying nine low-Earth-orbit internet satellites - the 24th group for the state-backed GuoWang broadband constellation - which enter their preset orbits successfully. It is the second Chinese orbital mission since the August 10 Long March 7A failure and brings GuoWang's deployed fleet to roughly 195 spacecraft.

On August 19, 2026, the assembled Chang'e-7 probe and its Long March 5 (Y14) carrier rocket are transferred vertically to the launch area at the Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site, with the China Manned Space Agency reporting all facilities in good condition ahead of final functional checks, a joint test, and propellant loading. The rollout keeps the mission on track for a launch as early as August 24, 2026, with no delay reported as of August 22 despite the ongoing investigation into the August 10 Long March 7A failure, whose shared YF-100 engine also powers the Long March 5's boosters.

On August 25, 2026 at 11:21 a.m. Beijing Time, a Long March 6C lifts off from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center carrying seven satellites into their planned orbits, including the GISTDA CubeSat-1 (Lingzhi-09) for Thailand's Geo-Informatics and Space Technology Development Agency, tasked with remote-sensing data collection for agriculture and ecological monitoring. It is the 665th cumulative flight of the Long March series and the fifth-plus successful mission since the August 10 Long March 7A failure, extending the run of successful YF-100-powered flights (Long March 5B, 12, and now 6C) that has continued through the still-unresolved 7A investigation.

The Long March 6C's spent upper stage from the August 25, 2026 rideshare mission (the 665th cumulative Long March launch) breaks apart in orbit roughly two days after liftoff. Commercial tracking firm LeoLabs detects the breakup at 02:30 UTC on August 27, 2026, in a decaying low orbit of about 396 by 482 km, estimating tens to hundreds of trackable fragments were generated. CASC has not disclosed a cause. It is the latest in a recurring pattern of post-mission upper-stage breakups affecting the Long March 6 family, most notably the Long March 6A, which shares a single YF-115 kerosene/liquid-oxygen second-stage engine design with the 6C.

On August 28, 2026 the Shenzhou-23 crew completed its first series of extravehicular activities, working about 5.5 hours and finishing at 1:59 p.m. Beijing Time. Zhu Yangzhu and Zhang Zhiyuan, supported from inside by Li Jiaying plus the station robotic arm and ground teams, repaired the space station's solar panels and installed debris shields - the second time Chinese astronauts have performed in-orbit solar-wing maintenance. Zhu made his second career EVA; Zhang's was his first. The trio launched May 24, 2026 and had been on board more than three months.

On October 16, 2025 a Long March 8A flies the 600th Long March mission, deploying a group of GuoWang internet satellites. By this milestone the family had delivered about 1,400 spacecraft and conducted roughly 86% of all China's space launches.

CASC sets a national record with 73 orbital launches in 2025 (69 Long March plus four Jielong-3), deploying over 300 spacecraft - a 43% jump over its 51 launches in 2024.

On December 23, 2025, the Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology (SAST), a CASC academy, flies the maiden mission of the Long March 12A - a 70.4-meter, methane/liquid-oxygen reusable rocket rated for about 12,000 kg to LEO - from a dedicated pad at Jiuquan. The rocket successfully delivers two satellites to orbit, but the first-stage's vertical landing attempt at a pad roughly 250 km downrange fails during the entry burn; SAST says the flight still yielded critical engineering data for future recovery attempts. Long March 12A is a separate reusable-rocket line from the CASC Commercial Rocket Co. Long March 12B that debuted in June 2026.

Chang'e 6 returns the first-ever samples from the far side of the Moon in June 2024, a world first for any space program.

The Wentian and Mengtian laboratory modules launch in 2022, completing the three-module Tiangong station and establishing a permanent Chinese crewed presence in orbit.

A Long March 5B lofts the Tianhe core module to begin assembly of the Tiangong space station, and the Tianwen-1 mission lands the Zhurong rover on Mars - China's first.

Chang'e 5 returns the first Chinese lunar samples in December 2020, and the lower-cost commercial Long March 8 flies its maiden mission that same month.

The 25-tonne-class Long March 5 debuts in November 2016, giving China the heavy-lift capacity needed for its space station modules, lunar sample return, and interplanetary probes.

A CASC Shenzhou 5 capsule carries Yang Liwei to orbit atop a Long March 2F on October 15, 2003, making China the third nation to launch a human into space independently.

CASC is established on July 1, 1999 as a state-owned enterprise from the restructuring of the former China Aerospace Corporation, becoming the prime contractor for China's space program.