One Arrow and Four Stars, Ceres 2 Carrier Rocket Successfully Goes Around

China News Service, Beijing, November 7 (Reporter Ma Shuaisha) According to news from China's private rocket company Galaxy Power Aerospace, at 7:37 on November 7, Beijing time, the Ceres-2 Yao-3 carrier rocket was launched from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center. It will carry a total of four satellites, including the Guanlan Test Star, the Yunyao-128 Star, the North China University-1 Satellite, and the Juntian-106A Satellite, into the predetermined orbit. The flight test mission was a complete success.

The Ceres 2 launch vehicle is a medium-sized launch vehicle developed by Galaxy Aerospace for the commercial launch market. It is an upgraded model of the Ceres series launch vehicles. It adopts a three-stage solid series plus liquid upper stage configuration, with a take-off mass of about 100 tons and a 500-kilometer sun-synchronous orbit carrying capacity of 1.3 tons. It takes into account multiple land and sea launch modes. In January 2026, the first flight of this type of rocket failed. The mission was the second flight of the Ceres 2 launch vehicle. Since this year, Galaxy Power Aerospace has successfully entered two new launch vehicle models, Ceres 2 and Pallas 1.

On November 7, the Ceres-2 Yaosan-3 carrier rocket was successfully launched from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center. Photo by Wang Jiangbo

The Guanlan test satellite carried on this mission will conduct all-day, all-weather, refined, and high-time-efficiency regular observations of global sea surface heights.

Yunyao-128 is a commercial meteorological satellite that can obtain high-precision detection data of various environmental factors such as atmospheric temperature and humidity pressure, ionospheric electron density, sea surface wind speed, significant wave height, sea ice density, soil moisture, etc. The satellite is also equipped with Astro Boy space robotic arm and test equipment such as selfie cameras and selfie screens. After entering orbit, on-orbit verification of intelligent space operation of commercial satellites will be carried out.

North China University Satellite No. 1 is the first test satellite of the "North China University-Planet Constellation" project. It is the first intelligent satellite independently developed by universities in Shanxi Province. It has the ability to dynamically monitor mineral resources and intelligent early warning of geological disasters. It also carries the functions of a "design-manufacturing-measurement and control" full-process teaching and scientific research platform.

The Juntian-106A satellite is a space situational awareness satellite used to conduct reliability verification of core technologies such as new-generation satellite platform design, space target monitoring, AI intelligent computing, and satellite-ground links. (over)