Galactic Energy’s First Liquid Rocket Reaches Orbit

At 10:00 local time on September 1, a rocket lifted off from a dedicated pad at the Dongfeng commercial aerospace innovation zone in Jiuquan and reached its planned orbit. For Beijing-based Galactic Energy, the flight of Zhishenxing-1 was the first launch of a liquid-fueled vehicle after its commercial missions had been carried by the solid-fueled Ceres family.

The new launcher is built for a larger job: low-orbit constellation networking and heavy payload missions. It stands 52 meters tall, has a 3.35-meter core diameter and a liftoff mass of about 283 tonnes. Its published target is a 5-to-7-tonne payload on a single low-orbit launch, with a design goal of at least 25 reuses.

Seven Cangqiong-50, or CQ-50, liquid-oxygen-kerosene engines power the first stage. They run in parallel and can throttle from 32 to 105 percent and restart multiple times. Galactic Energy says the cluster is designed so that, if one engine fails, the remaining six can complete the mission; the engines have accumulated more than 23,000 seconds of test-stand run time.

The flight was a baseline verification of orbit insertion and the rocket’s overall, propulsion and control systems. It did not attempt first-stage recovery. Galactic Energy plans to use flight data first, then progressively test re-entry control, grid fins, braking, descent and pinpoint landing on sea or land before attempting a vertical first-stage touchdown.

So what changes in practical terms? Galactic Energy now has an orbital liquid-launch program alongside its existing solid-rocket business, giving it a vehicle aimed at heavier constellation missions. The immediate result is qualification data, not reusable operations: the rocket reached orbit, while the recovery capability remains to be demonstrated in later flights.