Why it matters
Deep Blue Aerospace is the commercial launch company Jiangsu Deep Blue Aerospace Co., Ltd. (Jiangsu Shenlan Hangtian). Its Chinese about page, read on 1 November 2026, places the headquarters in the Wuxi National High-tech Industrial Development Zone at 256 Chengnan Road, with a Beijing office in the Yizhuang economic zone. The page says the company develops and builds liquid reusable rockets and intends to sell launch services, using first-stage recovery on the Nebula series to lower the cost of reaching orbit. It lists more than 400 people, including 7 doctoral degree holders and 83 master's degree holders, with R&D staff drawn mainly from CASC, CASIC, AVIC, and similar organizations.
The same page says the Nebula-1 first-flight rocket is still in subsystem ground tests and is being pushed toward a debut. It describes 2026 as a year for improving Nebula-1 recovery technology and the ability to serve satellite customers, and 2027 as the year Nebula-2 enters both its first-flight phase and commercial operation. Titanium Media, on 21 October 2026, wrote that public debut dates have already slipped more than once and that Nebula-1 had still not reached orbit.
History
Titanium Media dates the company to 2016 and identifies Huo Liang as founder. It recounts a public debut calendar that moved from an end-of-2024 orbital flight from Hainan, disclosed by the Hainan commercial launch site in March 2024, to the second quarter of 2025, and then toward early 2026. In February 2026, Huo said the first orbital flight would come after the Spring Festival. In March, Xinhua Daily reported that the debut rocket was at Haiyang in Shandong, that a first-quarter flight was expected, and that the mission would try both orbit and recovery. In April the company said combined rocket-and-ground and propellant-loading rehearsals were complete, and it did not give a new date. September financing reports, as Titanium Media read them, still described debut work as underway and no longer gave a window.
The most important flight so far is still a hop. Titanium Media says that in September 2024 a Nebula-1 vehicle flew a high-altitude vertical-landing test in Inner Mongolia for 179 seconds. Before engine shutdown it was less than 0.5 meters from the planned landing point. A thrust-control servo anomaly during the landing shutdown damaged part of the vehicle. Ten of 11 objectives were met. The company said it would try again in November, and Titanium Media found no public record that the reflight happened. In November 2025 the Nebula-1 first stage completed a 30-second, nine-engine static fire.
Vehicles and engines
On 1 November 2026 the Chinese rocket page listed a different Nebula-1 from the nine-engine vehicle in that test history. The page calls Nebula-1 a three-stage kerosene and liquid-oxygen rocket, with an 11+2-plus-upper-stage propulsion layout, a 3.35 meter diameter, 4 to 6 tonnes to low Earth orbit, and 3 tonnes to sun-synchronous orbit. Titanium Media says the early-2025 public design was a two-stage rocket with nine first-stage engines, about 2 tonnes to low Earth orbit if expended and 800 kilograms if the first stage was recovered. Tests of the older layout do not prove the newer one.
Nebula-2, on the same page, is a 5 meter kerosene and liquid-oxygen rocket of two or three stages, with an 11+1 engine layout, 25 tonnes to low Earth orbit and 18 tonnes to sun-synchronous orbit. The Chinese engine page lists the open-cycle pintle engines behind those names: Thunder-R at 283 kilonewtons at sea level and 335 kilonewtons in vacuum, throttling from 40 to 110 percent, with at least three starts; and Thunder-RS at 1,240 kilonewtons at sea level and 1,480 kilonewtons in vacuum, throttling from 50 to 110 percent, with three starts. Neither card names a Thunder-R 2.0. IT Home, citing the company on 27 October 2026, said 5 meter first-stage liquid-oxygen and kerosene tanks had rolled off the line at the Changqing base after the second-stage tanks, and that the main structural parts were basically complete. That report says the vehicle is stainless steel, that a 130-tonne-class Thunder-RS had finished a 200-second firing long enough to cover a first-stage flight, and that the design targets are more than 25 tonnes to low Earth orbit and more than 18 tonnes to a 500 kilometer sun-synchronous orbit. Recovery is described as a chopstick capture at the launch site, without landing legs. Those payload figures are design targets. Nebula-2 has not flown.
Business model
The about page frames Deep Blue as a launch-service business. Its stated way of holding down cost is to recover the first stage and then offer capacity for national space infrastructure. The 2026 and 2027 sentences are plans. The pages read for this overview do not show a customer manifest, a price list, or a signed launch contract.
Titanium Media's point on the older Nebula-1 is the commercial limit that remains until a heavier rocket flies. A vehicle that delivers about 2 tonnes, or 800 kilograms once recovery propellant and hardware are reserved, needs many flights to deploy a large constellation, and reuse saves money only if refurbishment and turnaround are cheap enough. The website's 4 to 6 tonne Nebula-1 card and the 25 tonne Nebula-2 card are the performance figures the company now publishes. IT Home says the company wants Nebula-2 for national satellite-internet deployment and for GTO and MEO missions. None of those services is backed by an orbital flight.
Financials
Titanium Media, writing on 21 October 2026, treated nearly RMB 2 billion of financing reported in September as fresh support for later development. The article does not print an exact closed amount or a post-money valuation. This overview does not restate the older Series A through B4 figures, the separate Youluoka investment, or the roughly $700 million valuation from 2024, because those rounds were not re-checked in the five sources used here.
The about page does not disclose revenue. The sources used here do not show an orbital launch from which launch-service revenue would have been recognized.
Competition and constraints
Titanium Media sets a 21 October 2026 scoreboard on which Deep Blue has not yet appeared. Galactic Energy's Pallas-1 reached orbit on 1 September 2026. The Long March 10B reached orbit on 10 July 2026, and its first stage was recovered at sea with a net. LandSpace's Zhuque-3 second flight vehicle reached orbit on 19 August 2026, and its first stage landed on legs at Minqin in Gansu. The article says a landing is not the same thing as routine reuse. Deep Blue's choice, a kerosene-oxygen rocket that tries to recover the first stage, is still waiting on a first orbital mission. The September 2024 hop no longer sits at the front of the Chinese reusable-rocket field.
Nebula-2's calendar has slipped in the same way. Titanium Media says the company pointed to a first flight at the end of 2025 in July 2024, moved it to 2026 in February 2025, and that Huo said in May 2025 that the first flight was expected in 2027. September 2026 financing reports still used 2027. The Chinese about page goes further than a test flight: it says 2027 is when Nebula-2 enters both its first-flight phase and commercial operation. That sentence is a company plan on an undated marketing page, not a license or a customer manifest.
What to watch
The blocking unknown is which Nebula-1 is supposed to fly. The ground-test story Titanium Media reconstructs belongs to a two-stage, nine-engine rocket of about 2 tonnes. The rocket page now lists a three-stage, 11+2-plus-upper-stage rocket of 4 to 6 tonnes. Until the company says which design the first-flight rocket uses, a debut date cannot be read off either description. The about page, still worded this way on 1 November 2026, gives no month.
For Nebula-2, the next hardware test matters more than another target year. IT Home's 27 October account says the main tanks exist and that a 200-second Thunder-RS firing has been done. The Chinese engine page still rates Thunder-RS at 1,240 kilonewtons at sea level and does not state an 11-engine liftoff thrust. A stated flight configuration, a launch, or a new static-fire report would change the picture. Another year passing without those would match the slips already on the record.