A Reporter’s Voyage Aboard China’s Sea-Launch Rocket
In the pre-dawn hours of 16 September, a rocket rose from the deck of a ship in the eastern waters off Shanghai and arced into a fading night sky, placing nine satellites into orbit. For the reporters who had sailed aboard the launch vessel with the support crew, the moment capped days of tense monitoring, windblown worry and quiet watchfulness.
The launch, reported by Xinhua, used the Gravity-1 Y3 rocket — built by the commercial firm Oriental Space — and lifted off at 06:00 Beijing time from a sea platform attributed to the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center. It carried eight Qianfan constellation networking satellites and one Enhanced Ultra-High-Speed Wireless Communication (EUHT) technology test satellite, all delivered to their preset orbits in what officials declared a complete success.
A first-person feature published by Xinhua Daily Telegraph on 22 September, written by reporters Zhang Wuyue and Wang Huan, traces the mission from the rocket’s slow transfer onto the ship to the final, successful countdown — offering a rare ground-level view of China’s fast-expanding sea-launch operations.
The Difficulty of Launching from the Sea
The reporters’ account begins on 10 September, when a 160-wheel self-propelled modular transporter rolled the Gravity-1 out of its assembly hall at the Oriental Spaceport in Haiyang, Shandong. The journey to the dock covered just 400 metres, but took a full hour.
“I counted specially — this transporter has 160 wheels,” Zhang Tao, deputy chief designer of the Gravity-1, told the reporters. “The main purpose is to maintain stability during transfer and avoid unnecessary disturbance as much as possible.”
Once at sea, the challenges multiplied. According to the feature, the sea’s complex and shifting conditions meant engineers had to track the rocket’s tilt angle and the load on its support legs. Song Wenfeng, deputy chief designer of the Gravity-1’s structural system, explained that if wave action made the rocket body swing by more than four degrees, its structural stability could be affected.
By 15 September the launch ship was in position, but heavy winds and waves complicated the removal of the rocket’s protective cover, with the body’s sway approaching that four-degree threshold. “The ship shook fairly noticeably,” Song said. “We were not only sweating for the colleagues removing the cover near the top of the rocket, but also worried whether the launch early the next morning could proceed smoothly.”
Footage of the launch was carried by CCTV’s Chinese-language news broadcast.
Why Launch from the Sea?
Despite the added complexity, sea launches offer advantages that land-based sites cannot match. Teng Yao, chief engineer of the Oriental Spaceport Group, told the reporters that at sea a launch vehicle “can choose from a relatively large launch area, achieving launches at various inclinations,” and that a dedicated platform gives China the ability to launch from sea areas globally.
Sea launches also reduce the need to coordinate airspace and shipping routes in advance, lower constraints on high-frequency launches, and allow rocket debris to fall into unoccupied waters — avoiding risks to people and property on the ground. As the feature notes, the approach has helped form a “Shandong–Shanghai–Guangdong” sea-launch layout, easing the industry’s chronic bottleneck of “satellites waiting for rockets, rockets waiting for launch pads.”
A Growing Constellation — and a Race for Cost
The eight Qianfan satellites place the constellation, operated by Shanghai Yuanxin Satellite Technology, at 256 satellites in orbit, according to C114, which reported that Qianfan — a low-Earth-orbit mega-constellation ultimately planned to exceed 10,000 satellites — will complete its first-phase 324-satellite global network by the end of 2026 and begin commercial operations.
Gravity-1’s chief designer and commander, Xu Guoguang, framed the mission’s purpose in plainly commercial terms. “The core of commercial space rocket launching is to send as many satellites as possible into space in the most reliable and economical way,” he said. To that end, the rocket is built in a stout, bundled configuration — four boosters slung low to lower its centre of gravity and help it stand steady against the sea’s motion while boosting payload capacity.
That cost focus extends beyond the current rocket. Xu noted that while Gravity-1 is solid-fuelled, “as more and more liquid rockets enter the market, the capacity bottleneck will gradually be eased.” On the much-discussed prospect of reusable rockets, he offered a measured view: China has ample technology, but “what we lack is precisely the skill and ability to process these pearls into works of art” — and reusability must serve cost reduction, not undermine it by burning excessive fuel.
Oriental Space’s next-generation Gravity-2 is already on the drawing board. According to OFweek, the liquid oxygen-kerosene rocket is targeting a 500-kilometre sun-synchronous orbit capacity of about 15 tonnes and a launch cost of roughly RMB 20,000 per kilogram, with reusability verification planned by the end of 2026. The same ~RMB 20,000/kg price target was previously cited by Jiemian News, which reported the figure alongside Oriental Space’s stated ambition to apply for a listing on Shanghai’s STAR Market. As OFweek observed, Gravity-1’s success both proves the value of the solid-rocket route and marks the moment the company must begin handing the main commercial stage to liquid rockets.
What’s Next
For the reporters aboard the launch ship, the technology’s reach is personal as well as strategic. Satellites, Oriental Space’s chief structural designer Xing Chunlei explained, divide broadly into communication, navigation and remote sensing functions — navigation best represented by China’s BeiDou system, while the Qianfan satellites this mission carried act as space-based base stations solving the “last mile” of network coverage.
The mission is a milestone for China’s sea-launch ambitions and a marker in a broader transition: from solid to liquid fuels, from single launches to constellation-scale deployment, and from national programmes to commercially driven competition. Whether Gravity-1’s quarterly launch cadence can be sustained — and whether Oriental Space’s liquid-fuelled successor arrives on schedule — will shape how quickly China’s satellite networks take shape in orbit.