(Yicai) Dec. 2 -- China launched the first carrier rocket and sent two experimental satellites into their planned orbits from the country's first launch site built for commercial missions in southern Hainan province.

The successful takeoff of the Long March-12 on its maiden flight from the Hainan commercial spacecraft launch site on Nov. 30 is a good start for the entire sector, a commercial aerospace industry insider told Yicai yesterday.

The Hainan commercial spacecraft launch site is built to support large-scale and high-density launches. China's setbacks with stackable satellites, satellite-rocket separation tech, and low-cost mass manufacturing will likely be overcome by 2026.

Long March-12 is ready for high-frequency launches, experts from China Aerospace Science and Technology, the main contractor for the country's space program, said to Yicai.

One of the experimental satellites, developed by GalaxySpace, a manufacturer of low Earth orbit satellites for the commercial space sector, is for satellite internet service. This technology is based on satellite communication, which forms a large-scale network by launching a certain number of satellites to provide broadband internet access and other communication services to ground and air terminals. It was

GalaxySpace will accelerate the development of core technologies for satellites directly connected to smartphones, as well as the mass production of satellites and various key equipment, Zhu Zhengxian, chief technology officer of the Beijing-based company, told Yicai.

"With the continuously improving carrying capacity and the constantly increasing number of launch sites, the commercial space industry will develop faster and faster," Zhu noted.

The premise of satellite scale networking is to deploy satellites with structural stability into low Earth orbit at lower costs and higher efficiency, but orbit resources are limited.

The United States had 50,626 low-orbit satellites as of April 2022, according to data from the International Telecommunication Union. The most developed among those is SpaceX's Starlink, proposed by the owner of the space technology firm, Elon Musk, in 2014.

China submitted a constellation spectrum application in September 2020, planning to launch 12,992 satellites and gradually build them into a satellite network, according to the ITU. In July last year, the Long March-2C carrier rocket launched a satellite internet service test satellite.

Editor: Martin Kadiev