The Long March-12 carrier rocket takes off from the Hainan commercial spacecraft launch site in South China's Hainan Province at 18:21 on August 4, 2025. It successfully placed the payloads, the seventh group of low-orbit internet satellites developed by GALAXYSPACE, into preset orbit. Photo: VCG

China's first spaceport dedicated to facilitating commercial operations, the Hainan International Commercial Aerospace Launch Center located in South China's tropical island province of Hainan, has pulled off two successful launches in just five days. 

The latest carrier rocket, the Long March-12, took off from the launch site's No.2 pad and placed the seventh group of low-orbit internet satellites into preset orbit on Monday evening. Prior to that, the Long March-8A carrier rocket launched with success the sixth group of satellites for the internet constellation on July 30, from the Hainan commercial launch site's No.1 pad.  

Yang Tianliang, the chairman of the Hainan International Commercial Aerospace Launch Co, which operates the Hainan site, told the Global Times on Tuesday, although the launch site was designed for high-frequency launches, conducting two rocket launches within five days was a first for them, with many challenges still to overcome during the process.

Only some 600 meters apart, the launch site's No.2 pad supported its first space mission on November 30, 2024, while the No.1 pad had its debut flight on March 12, 2025. Managing to execute two consecutive launches within 120 hours has further demonstrated the freshly built launch site's capability of supporting high frequent launches, according to Yang.

The maiden flight missions for the two pads proved that they are technically ready, while the latest consecutive missions in five days shows the maturity of the systems, Yang explained. "It proved that our coordination works are effective and align with requirements. It was a huge boost to our confidence." 

The major challenges for such frequent consecutive missions lie in the fact that the two launch pads use different propellants and the fuels cannot be mixed. Therefore, we must clean the pipelines to ensure no cross-contamination taking place with another propellant, which requires extreme precision with no room for error, the launch site head explained. 

Looking ahead, Yang said the launch site plans to constantly elevate the frequency of launches. 

According to a statement the Hainan site provided to the Global Times on Tuesday, the Phase-II project of the Hainan commercial space launch site would add No.3 and No.4 pads as well as the Gusong space monitoring and tracking station, constructions of which began on January 25. The two new launch pads would be supporting liquid propellant rocket launches. After completion, it will form a "two-phase, four-pad" configuration, better meeting the demands for "high-frequency, high-capacity, low-cost" launches.

On Monday, the successful mission also marked the first time that the group of low-orbit internet satellites have been independently developed by GalaxySpace, a Beijing-based space start-up, and successfully launched. 

According to Hu Zhao, chief designer of through design innovation and vertical integration, the development of this satellite group adopts a modular design tailored for mass production, supporting parallel assembly, integration and testing of multiple modules, combined with robotic integration processes to enable large-scale parallel testing. These innovations have enhanced the production line's flexibility and digital capabilities in satellite manufacturing, reducing satellite development cycles by 80 percent, Hu said. 

All satellites in this group rolled off the assembly at firm's intelligent manufacturing factory, which can produce over 100 medium-sized satellites annually, Hu told the Global Times on Tuesday.