China's Smart Dragon 3 rocket launches satellites from sea

China launched a Smart Dragon 3 carrier rocket on Monday morning off the coast of Haiyang in Shandong province, placing 10 satellites in space.

The rocket blasted off at 11 am from a launch service ship and soon deployed the satellites into their preset positions in a low-Earth orbit about 650 kilometers above the ground, marking the rocket model’s fifth sea-based launch, China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology, maker of the Smart Dragon 3 series, said in a news release after the liftoff.

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 third also happened off the coast of Yangjiang and placed nine satellites in space. The fourth occurred in September off the coast of Haiyang and deployed eight satellites.

By now, China has performed 15 sea-based launches, using four types of rockets: Long March 11, Smart Dragon 3, Ceres 1 and Gravity 1.

This was the second space mission by China in 2025.