China ExPace Kuaizhou-11 Solid Fueled Commercial Rocket Satellite Launch

China ExPace Kuaizhou-11 Solid Fueled Commercial Rocket Satellite Launch

🚀 ExPace’s Kuaizhou-11 solid fueled commercial rocket blasted off from Launch Area 95 at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center at 10:40 am China Standard Time (02:40 am Universal Coordinated Time) on September 17, 2026, successfully sending the Tianyi-51 and Tianyi-52 satellites into their planned orbits.

SpaceTY's Tianyi-51 and Tianyi-52 are C-band interferometric synthetic-aperture radar (SAR) satellites. They were deployed into a 55-degree orbit for daily revisiting of imaging sites. Another stated reason for choosing that orbital inclination was to eliminate blind spots in urban regions and to provide a third dimension to captured sets of images.

Both satellites are able to capture the Earth below at a resolution of 3 meters with an imaging swath of 25 kilometers, or at 2 meters with a swath of 40 kilometers. Images captured by the satellites are planned to be pre-processed onboard via installed dedicated compute and intelligent software, as is an ever-increasing pattern on Chinese satellites.

While being built by SpaceTY, the two satellites have secondary names as well, chosen by their respective clients. Tianyi-51 carries the name Caiyun-SAR-01 from the Yunnan Provincial Bureau of Geology and Mineral Resources Exploration and Development and Yunnan Geology and Mining Group Co. Ltd. Tianyi-52 is known as Xinglianti-Tianyuan-YG-01 by Xinglianti Wuxi Aerospace Technology Co. Ltd.

SpaceTY also spoke of the two satellites as being able to support efforts in nations participating in China's Belt and Road Initiative.

ExPace promotes Kuaizhou-11’s low costs to customers, high orbital accuracy, and high reliability, while being a quick-to-prepare solution. Tailored to the needs of the two Tianyi satellites, the launch vehicle used its 2.2-meter-diameter in-line fairing to protect them during ascent out of the atmosphere.

So far, 2026 has been Kuaizhou-11’s busiest year, with previous missions in March and June to achieve one launch per quarter. 

This launch was the 7th Kuaizhou-11 mission, and the 41st flight of the Kuaizhou series. This was also the 66th launch from China in 2026.

Image Credit: ExPace

Text Credit: Jack C.
Date: Sept. 16, 2026

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