蓝箭朱雀二号改进型遥七首送千帆十星入极轨

From Launch Area 96A at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, LandSpace’s Zhuque-2E lifted off at 14:26 pm China Standard Time (06:26 am Universal Coordinated Time) on September 15th, carrying its first group of connectivity satellites towards a polar orbit. Atop of the rocket were ten Qianfan connectivity satellites for its first group launched via a commercially developed launch vehicle, for the constellation’s smallest batch launched, while being its fifteenth overall. Those satellites were produced by the Innovation Academy for Microsatellites, Chinese Academy of Sciences (中国科学院微小卫星创新研究院), and bring Qianfan's total count deployed to 248. The Qianfan (千帆) mega-constellation, sometimes referred to as SpaceSail, is operated by Shanghai Spacesail Technologies Co Ltd (上海垣信卫星科技有限公司), aiming to provide space-based internet connectivity services in China and abroad in places including Brazil, Malaysia, Kazakhstan, Türkiye, and via airlines, around the fourth quarter of this year. Costing under 10 million Yuan (1.47 million United States Dollars) a piece, each Qianfan satellite weighs 300 kilograms with a ‘flat pack’ design, with a single solar array, to fit as many satellites as possible inside the rocket fairing in two parallel stacks. For maneuvering in orbit, each satellite has an electric hall-effect thruster burning krypton to generate 20 millinewtons of thrust, with a specific impulse of 1,385 seconds. By deploying ten Qianfan satellites, LandSpace has become the first of three enterprises contracted in August 2025 to fulfill its demonstration launch, beating CAS Space by about a month and far ahead of Space Pioneer. In the future, the company should deploy further satellite groups to assist with the constellation's growth towards having thousands in orbit, and shared: “LandSpace has achieved routine commercial launch operations with the Zhuque-2E, […] LandSpace will keep enhancing its capability for stable and efficient access to space, providing launch-capacity support for satellite internet development and the scaled growth of the commercial space sector.” With this launch, Zhuque-2E has performed its third of the year, two months after back-to-back missions in May and June. LandSpace has previously said that they would like to perform six to ten launches this year by batch-producing the launch vehicle up to its fifteenth flight. The ability to perform those flights has been delayed due to the two months it took to launch Zhuque-3 for the second time a…