China now has roughly half a dozen private launch companies building real rockets. In 2026, one of them successfully landed an orbital booster. LandSpace launched Zhuque-3 from Jiuquan on 18 August and recovered the first stage on its legs, a first for a Chinese private company. None of these firms existed before 2014, when Beijing opened the launch industry to non-state capital.
But the private sector is growing alongside the state giant, not replacing it. The China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) still builds every Long March rocket and handles most Chinese missions. CASC is the state contractor building the hardware. The separate government body coordinating China’s civil space program is the China National Space Administration (CNSA), covered in full on our China space program page.
The Companies and Their Rockets
| Company | Main vehicle | Propellant | Flight status | Listing status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| LandSpace | Zhuque-3 | Methane and liquid oxygen | Orbital. Booster landed August 2026 | IPO filed on the Shanghai STAR Market, under review |
| Space Pioneer | Tianlong-3 | Kerosene and liquid oxygen | First orbital attempt failed, April 2026 | Private |
| Galactic Energy | Ceres-1, Pallas-1 in development | Solid, then kerosene and liquid oxygen | Ceres-1 flying regularly | IPO counseling since October 2025 |
| iSpace | Hyperbola-3 | Methane and liquid oxygen | In development | Private |
| CAS Space | Lijian-1, Lijian-2 | Solid, then liquid | Lijian-2 debuted April 2026 | IPO filed |
| Orienspace | Gravity-1, Gravity-2 | Solid, then liquid | Gravity-1 flown | Private |
| Deep Blue Aerospace | Nebula-1 | Kerosene and liquid oxygen | High-altitude landing test failed near touchdown | Private |
| Expace, a CASIC subsidiary | Kuaizhou series | Solid | Flying | State-linked |
Listing status changes. Confirm any of it against the Shanghai Stock Exchange before treating a company as investable.
LandSpace Has Landed a Booster
LandSpace has done two things no other Chinese private company has. It flew Zhuque-2 to orbit in 2023, the first methane-fueled rocket anywhere to reach orbit, ahead of both American methane vehicles built by SpaceX and Blue Origin. Then it landed the Zhuque-3 first stage in August 2026 after delivering the Honghu-03 satellite.
The landing was incomplete. The booster later tipped over when a fire during propellant offloading weakened a leg, which cost LandSpace its most likely candidate for a first reflight. Zhuque-3 and both of its flights are covered on the Zhuque-3 page. For how that single landing measures up against SpaceX’s own reuse record, see our China reusable rockets vs. SpaceX comparison.
LandSpace filed for a listing on the Shanghai Stock Exchange’s STAR Market at the end of 2025, seeking about 7.5 billion yuan, roughly $1 billion. It submitted an updated prospectus in mid-2026 projecting profitability in 2029, per SpaceNews.
Space Pioneer Has the Second-Largest Rocket and a Failure
Space Pioneer built Tianlong-3, a kerosene rocket in the Falcon 9 size class, and its first orbital flight failed shortly after launch in April 2026. Space Pioneer had previously flown the smaller Tianlong-2 successfully.
Tianlong-3 was intended as a high-cadence constellation launcher, and losing the first vehicle put a large piece of China’s planned launch supply behind schedule.
Galactic Energy Sells Launches Today
Galactic Energy has the most conventional business among the private firms. Its small solid-fuel Ceres-1 has flown regularly since 2020, carrying small satellites for paying customers. That revenue funds development of the larger Pallas-1, a kerosene rocket with a landing first stage.
That order of operations is unusual in the sector. Most Chinese launch startups raised money against a future large rocket. Galactic Energy built a small one that works and used it to pay for the next.
iSpace, CAS Space, Orienspace and Deep Blue
Four more companies have flown hardware or are close to it.
- iSpace was the first Chinese private firm to reach orbit, in 2019, and is now building Hyperbola-3, a methane vehicle with vertical landing and a sea recovery option under study.
- CAS Space spun out of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and flies the Lijian series, also called Kinetica. Lijian-2 debuted in April 2026 at about 30,000 yuan per kilogram, undercutting state Long March rates on an expendable vehicle. Our Chinese rocket launch cost breakdown sets that price against the rest of the sector.
- Orienspace flew Gravity-1 from a sea platform and is developing the larger Gravity-2.
- Deep Blue Aerospace ran a high-altitude vertical landing test of Nebula-1 that failed close to touchdown, the hardest part of the profile to get right.
The Sector Only Exists Because of a 2014 Rule Change
Private launch was not permitted in China until 2014, when the State Council opened the sector to non-state capital. Every company in the table above was founded after that decision, most of them between 2015 and 2018, and several were started by engineers who left CASC.
That timeline explains the shape of the field. A Western observer comparing LandSpace to SpaceX is comparing a firm founded in 2015 to one founded in 2002. The Chinese sector had no equivalent of the early Falcon 1 years, and it began with a domestic satellite market that barely existed. For how the two countries’ broader space programs measure up beyond just private launch firms, see our US vs. China space program comparison.
The policy also set the boundaries. Companies can build and launch rockets. They cannot operate their own tracking networks or launch sites without state involvement, and the pads they use are covered on the Chinese launch sites page.
How Private These Companies Are
Chinese private launch firms are privately owned and operate inside a state system. They launch from sites the government runs, use state tracking and telemetry networks, and sell much of their capacity to the Guowang and Qianfan satellite constellations, both state-backed programs.
Their investors reflect the same pattern. Funding rounds mix venture capital with government guidance funds and state-owned enterprise arms. That structure removes some of the commercial pressure a Western startup faces and adds a different one: a company whose main customer is a national program is exposed to that program’s schedule.
The upside for China is redundancy. Six companies chasing the same reusable rocket means the capability survives several of them failing. The cost is duplicated engine development across firms that will not all survive.
What Chinese Commercial Rockets Carry
The customer base is narrower than the company count suggests. Most Chinese commercial launches carry one of three things: batches of broadband satellites for Guowang or Qianfan, small Earth-observation spacecraft for provincial or commercial operators, or technology demonstrators for the companies themselves.
International customers are largely absent. United States export rules treat most satellite hardware as controlled, which effectively blocks American-built spacecraft from Chinese rockets and, through component sourcing, many European ones too. That leaves Chinese launch firms competing for a domestic market rather than the global one.
The consequence is that constellation deployment schedules set the sector’s revenue. A company with a working rocket and no constellation contract has a smaller business than its flight record suggests.
Who Should Watch This Sector and Who Should Not
Anyone tracking global launch supply has reason to follow these companies, because Chinese commercial capacity fills two constellations of more than 20,000 planned satellites.
Investors looking for exposure should be careful. None of these firms trades publicly as of September 2026, and LandSpace’s filings project profitability only in 2029. United States accounts generally lack direct access to mainland China A-shares, including STAR Market listings.
Foreign capital reaches mainland shares mainly through Stock Connect and the Qualified Foreign Institutional Investor (QFII) program, which are built for institutions rather than retail accounts. China’s foreign-investment rules also restrict or prohibit foreign ownership in aerospace sectors regardless of exchange access.
Even after a listing like LandSpace’s clears, a retail investor’s realistic path to direct shareholding stays narrow. Readers looking for tradable space equities should start with the best space stocks page instead.
The Listing Rules Changed Underneath the Roster
The IPO queue described above did not form on its own. The Shanghai Stock Exchange rewrote its STAR Market listing standards specifically to let unprofitable, technology-heavy companies file, and the timing lines up with the rocket landings and launches in the table above.
The exchange’s “1+6” reform, issued in June 2025, broadened STAR Market eligibility to unprofitable firms built around core proprietary technology, which is the only way a launch company still years from positive earnings can list at all. Then, in December 2025, the exchange went further for this sector specifically: it published guidance requiring a commercial rocket company seeking a STAR Market listing to have already achieved a successful orbital insertion of a payload using a medium-to-large, reusable launch vehicle, as reported by Payload. That single clause explains why LandSpace’s August 2026 Zhuque-3 landing mattered to more than its engineering record. It was also the event that cleared the company’s central listing hurdle.
The filings that have followed put real numbers behind the roster’s listing-status column. LandSpace is seeking about 7.5 billion yuan (roughly $1.1 billion) while reporting 2025 revenue of just 52 million yuan (about $7.7 million) against a net loss of 1.71 billion yuan (about $253 million), and it projects profitability only by 2029. CAS Space is seeking 4.18 billion yuan (about $607 million) against a 2024 loss of 748 million yuan (about $105 million) on 243 million yuan of revenue. Galactic Energy, which the table above lists as privately held, entered IPO counseling in October 2025, a required pre-filing step under Chinese securities rules, after flying its Pallas-1 rocket successfully in September 2025.
None of these companies is profitable, and the exchange’s own reform is why that no longer blocks a filing. A reader comparing this queue to a Western IPO should treat the STAR Market’s unprofitable-tech carve-out as the reason these numbers can appear in a prospectus at all, not as a sign the businesses are further along than they are.
What Would Change the Roster
A completed listing would change it most. If LandSpace’s STAR Market IPO clears, the sector gains its first public company and its first audited financials, which would replace estimates with disclosed numbers.
A reflown booster would change it in the other direction, by separating whichever firm gets there first from the rest of the field. To check current filings, search the company’s name directly on the Shanghai Stock Exchange STAR Market listing pages.