China's major space mission launched this year: the 23rd launch of God Two, a reusable rocket flight validation.

At the news conference for the 2026 "China Space Day" hosted by the National Space Administration today, officials from the National Space Administration reviewed the significant progress in space exploration in 2025 and released information on important tasks for 2026. The spokesperson introduced the achievements in space exploration over the past year and the main tasks for this year. Looking back on the past year, China's space exploration has steadily advanced. In 2025, a total of 92 space launch missions were carried out, an increase of 35% compared to 2024. The Tianwen-2 probe was successfully launched and entered a transfer orbit to the asteroid 2016HO3, marking the beginning of China's first asteroid exploration and sample return mission. The Tianwen-1 mission continued to conduct global and regional exploration of Mars, with 3.5TB of scientific data publicly released to scientists worldwide. Manned space missions successfully completed 4 launch missions and 2 return missions, and successfully completed the first emergency launch, advancing the manned lunar exploration project in an orderly manner. Significant progress was made in the Beidou scale application in key industries and mass consumer areas. The Gaofen-3 04 satellite was successfully launched, further enhancing China's stereoscopic Earth observation capabilities. The construction of the Chinese satellite internet system accelerated comprehensively, with the construction of a mass production line for satellite constellations accelerating. The Long March 2D rocket achieved a one-hundred percent success rate, becoming China's second type of rocket to complete one hundred launches. The Zhuque-3 and Long March 12A reusable rockets conducted their maiden test flights. In 2026, China's space missions will continue to be intensively implemented: Tianwen-2 will approach the target asteroid for close-range exploration; The manned space engineering project will carry out missions such as Shenzhou-23 manned spacecraft; Various types of reusable rockets will conduct flight verifications; Commercial space activities will develop with high-level safety and quality assurance.