Overview
- Two consecutive Long March missions on Saturday and Sunday placed additional 千帆 low‑Earth‑orbit broadband satellites into service and pushed the constellation to roughly 238 on‑orbit satellites.
- An upgraded Long March 8甲 completed its first post‑upgrade flight and delivered 20 satellites in one launch, setting a new per‑launch payload record for that vehicle.
- A Long March 6改 launch put 18 千帆 polar satellites into their planned orbit and the flight used the 97th through 100th solid strap‑on motors from CASC’s 4th Academy, a sign of batch production maturity.
- China has set a July 10–13 window for the maiden flight of the reusable Long March 10乙, which will test a sea‑net recovery method where a ship captures a returning first stage in a large net.
- Separately, SpaceX told U.S. regulators it deorbited 260 Starlink satellites over six months, a disclosure that has raised scientific and policy concerns about atmospheric impacts and prompted discussion of stricter lifecycle rules for large constellations.