Private companies key players in space exploration

The trial of Tianlong 3 — a two-stage kerosene-liquid oxygen rocket developed by Beijing Tianbing Technology — failed in Gongyi, Henan province, on Sunday. The company apologized on Tuesday for the accident.

Most private space enterprises were founded after November 2014, when the State Council started encouraging private capital to participate in space infrastructure construction for civil use and later stressed official support for commercial satellites. That's 13 years after Musk founded SpaceX.

Private capital has also caught up with the small satellite launching subsector since then. The OS-X6B suborbital rocket as a test rocket was successfully launched in February 2021, Hyperbola 1 sent a satellite into orbit in December 2023, while Tianlong 2, the model before the failed Tianlong 3, had sent a satellite into the 500-kilometer high sun synchronous orbit in April 2023.