The backbone of a national space program
China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation is not a company in the Western sense so much as the industrial spine of a nation-state's entire spaceflight enterprise. Wholly owned by the central government through the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC), CASC is the prime contractor for almost everything China does above the atmosphere: the Long March rockets that lift the payloads, the Shenzhou capsules that carry the crews, the Tiangong station they live on, the BeiDou navigation and GuoWang broadband satellites in orbit, the Chang'e and Tianwen probes exploring the Moon and deep space, and the strategic missiles that underpin the country's nuclear deterrent. Roughly 86% of all Chinese orbital launches in history have flown on a CASC vehicle.
That breadth makes CASC the closest thing the world has to a single organization that does what NASA, the Pentagon's strategic forces, and the prime contractors building their hardware all do at once — under one state-owned roof. It is, by missions flown, the most prolific launch organization on the planet, and the instrument through which China intends to become a peer space power to the United States by 2030.
From restructuring to superpower ambitions
CASC was established on July 1, 1999, carved out of the former China Aerospace Corporation during a reorganization that split China's aerospace sector into a manufacturing-focused CASC and a defense-electronics sibling, CASIC. The new entity inherited a decades-old missile and rocket lineage stretching back to Qian Xuesen and the founding of China's ballistic-missile program in the 1950s.
The milestones since have traced a steep curve. In 2003 a Long March 2F carried Yang Liwei aboard Shenzhou 5, making China the third nation to launch a human to orbit independently. The heavy-lift Long March 5 debuted in 2016, unlocking the mass needed for everything that followed: the 2020 Chang'e 5 lunar sample return, the assembly of the three-module Tiangong space station completed in 2022, the Zhurong Mars rover, and in 2024 the first-ever sample return from the far side of the Moon aboard Chang'e 6. Each of these was a world-class achievement, and several — far-side sampling chief among them — were genuine firsts for any space program.
The Long March family and an accelerating cadence
The Long March (Changzheng) family is CASC's defining product line and the most-flown rocket series in the world. It spans the human-rated Long March 2F — the only Chinese vehicle cleared to carry astronauts — through the kerolox Long March 7 cargo workhorse, the lower-cost Long March 8 optimized for satellite constellations, and the 25-tonne-class Long March 5 that hauls space-station modules and deep-space probes.
What stands out in 2026 is the cadence. The family flew its 600th cumulative mission in October 2025 and its 650th just about eight months later, on June 11, 2026, when a Long March 5 lofted the TJS-25 satellite from Wenchang. Across more than 650 flights the series has delivered roughly 1,400 spacecraft. CASC set a national record with 73 orbital launches in 2025 and is targeting more than 100 in 2026, part of an industry-wide Chinese push toward roughly 140 launches for the year — a figure that would have been unthinkable a decade ago and reflects a launch infrastructure built for industrial-scale throughput.
Chasing reusability
For years CASC's chief strategic weakness against SpaceX was the absence of a reusable rocket: its Long March fleet was expendable, throwing away expensive hardware on every flight. That gap is now closing fast. On June 1, 2026, CASC conducted a surprise maiden flight of the partially reusable Long March 12B from Jiuquan, delivering two Qianfan broadband satellites to orbit. The 72-meter, 4.37-meter-diameter vehicle runs nine YF-102R kerolox engines, is rated for about 20 tonnes to low Earth orbit in expendable mode, and was built with propulsive first-stage recovery in mind — though no landing was attempted on the debut.
The 12B sits within a broader reusability roadmap. The super-heavy Long March 10, which completed a low-altitude flight and crew-capsule abort test in February 2026, is a partially reusable vehicle being developed for the crewed lunar program. Further out, the Long March 9 is a fully reusable, Starship-class methalox super-heavy aimed at mega-constellations and deep-space cargo, with first flight targeted around 2033. Together these vehicles represent China's bet that it can replicate — and at national scale, perhaps exceed — the economics that reusability gave its American rival.
Humans, the Moon, and the planets
Beyond launch, CASC runs the full stack of China's crewed and deep-space exploration. The Shenzhou spacecraft ferries three taikonauts at a time to the Tiangong station, resupplied by Tianzhou cargo freighters; the Tianzhou 10 mission delivered about 7 tonnes of supplies in May 2026, and the Shenzhou 23 crew that launched on May 24, 2026 included the first astronaut from Hong Kong and China's first assignment of a crew member to a year-long in-orbit stay.
The deep-space portfolio is equally ambitious. The Tianwen-2 probe arrived at the near-Earth quasi-moon asteroid Kamo'oalewa on June 7, 2026, beginning a survey campaign ahead of an attempted sample collection — including the first anchor-and-attach sampling ever tried at an asteroid — with a return capsule due back in Inner Mongolia around late 2026. Chang'e 7, headed for the lunar south pole, arrived at its launch site in April 2026 for a flight targeted no earlier than August. All of this feeds the headline national goal: landing Chinese astronauts on the Moon before 2030, using two Long March 10 launches to separately deliver the Mengzhou crew spacecraft and the Lanyue lander.
Structure, business model, and moat
CASC's roughly 170,000 employees are organized into a constellation of specialized academies that give it near-total vertical integration. The China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology (CALT) builds the Long March rockets, the China Academy of Space Technology (CAST) builds satellites and the Shenzhou spacecraft, the Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology (SAST) develops vehicles and payloads, and dedicated propulsion institutes build the engines. Commercial launch services are marketed internationally through the China Great Wall Industry Corporation.
Its moat is structural rather than competitive: as a state-owned enterprise reporting to SASAC, CASC is funded and tasked by the Chinese government, insulated from the market pressures and capital cycles that discipline private launch firms. Revenue is not disclosed cleanly by year but has been reported in the range of CN¥294 billion (roughly $46 billion) across its full portfolio of launch, satellite, human-spaceflight, deep-space, and strategic-missile work. The flip side of that protection is that CASC now faces real competition at home: a cohort of venture-backed Chinese launch startups — LandSpace, Galactic Energy, Space Pioneer, CAS Space and others — is pushing reusability and lower costs, which is part of what is spurring CASC to move faster on vehicles like the Long March 12B.
What to watch next
The near-term tells will be on the reusability and lunar tracks. Watch for the first orbital flight of the single-stick Long March 10A (the Mengzhou 1 mission) expected in late 2026, the triple-core Long March 10 in 2027, and — critically — the first propulsive first-stage recovery attempt on a Long March 12B or 10-derived vehicle, which would be CASC's first orbital booster landing and the clearest signal that it has matched the core SpaceX capability.
On the exploration side, the Tianwen-2 asteroid sampling and the Chang'e 7 south-pole launch are the immediate milestones, both feeding toward the larger prizes: a crewed lunar landing before 2030, the Tianwen-3 Mars sample return later in the decade, and the build-out of the GuoWang state broadband constellation, which CASC is launching alongside the commercial Qianfan network. Each successful step compounds China's claim to space-superpower parity — and CASC is the organization that has to deliver every one of them.
Sources
- SpaceNews — Long March 5 launches, 650th Long March mission
- SpaceNews — Long March 12B reusable maiden flight
- SpaceNews — China's 2026 crewed lunar tests and record launches
- Global Times — 600th Long March launch and ~86% share of China's missions
- China in Space — Tianwen-2 arrival at asteroid Kamo'oalewa
- CASC official website