Smart Dragon 3 rocket successfully completes third space launch

China launched a Smart Dragon 3 carrier rocket on Saturday morning off the coast of Yangjiang in Guangdong province, placing nine satellites in space.

The rocket blasted off at 11:07 am from a launch service ship, thundering up into cloudy skies.

After a short flight, the vehicle deployed the satellites into their preset orbital positions, marking the success of the launch mission, China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology, maker of the Smart Dragon 3 series, announced soon after the liftoff.

This has been the third space launch conducted from the South China Sea. It is also the first time the Smart Dragon 3 model to has launched a foreign satellite — one of the nine satellites, NExSat-1, is an experimental spacecraft built by Egypt's National Authority for Remote Sensing and Space Sciences, and Germany's Berlin Space Technologies.

The Smart Dragon 3 is a solid-propellant rocket model. The type is 31 meters tall, has a diameter of 2.65 meters and can carry a liftoff weight of 140 metric tons. It is mainly propelled by a high-performance, solid-propellant engine, which holds 71 tons of propellant that creates a thrust of 200 tons.

The rocket is capable of sending multiple satellites with a combined weight of 1.5 tons to a typical sun-synchronous orbit at an altitude of 500 kilometers.

Smart Dragon 3 made its maiden flight in December 2022 from a ship in the Yellow Sea, placing 14 satellites into orbit. Its second mission took place in December 2023 off Yangjiang, becoming the first sea-based rocket launch from the South China Sea.

The Smart Dragon 3 is suitable for clients who wish to quickly launch large numbers of satellites to establish space-based commercial networks as soon as possible, according to Jin Xin, the rocket's project manager.

By now, China has performed 10 sea-based launches — five by the Long March 11 rocket model, three by the Smart Dragon 3, one by the Ceres 1 rocket of the Beijing-based private company Galactic Energy and another one by the Gravity 1 of Orienspace, another private company in Beijing. Seven of those took place in the Yellow Sea while three in the South China Sea.