KINETICA / LÌJIÀN (力箭) — China

CAS Space is a spinoff of the China Academy of Sciences, which unlike a lot of the other “academies” that get mentioned in articles about Chinese rockets, is not a division of a for-profit corporation, but an actual academic institution — the biggest research organization in the world. It runs two universities and over a hundred research institutes. They retain majority ownership of CAS Space, which is more formally called Guangzhou Zhongke Aerospace Exploration Technology Co., Ltd. (广州中科宇航探索技术有限公司) — a name which apparently gets shortened to Zhōngkē (中科) in use — this apparently also being a reference to the parent academy, as the term can translate as “China science”. Early on, their first rocket was sometimes just called the Zhongke-1 instead of its proper name, Lijian-1. (Lìjiàn means “powerful arrow”.) The Western brand name Kinetica was added later.

Like LandSpace, CAS Space got their start by making solid-fuel rockets. This is rocket-building on easy mode because you can just repurpose solid motors that were manufactured for use in ballistic missiles. Unlike LandSpace, they were actually successful at it. Their Lijian-1 rocket, consisting of four solid-fuel stages, flew twelve times in its first four years, with all but one launch being successful. This outpaces the rival Jielong-3 from Chinarocket (a spinoff of China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation, one of the two main aerospace contractors in the country), and the government’s Long March 11 as well, though on the other hand neither of those has yet failed. So the Kinetica-1, though a bit of a latecomer, has grabbed itself a substantial slice of the very busy market in China for small solid-fuel satellite launches... though the outstanding success story in that field has to be the Ceres from Galactic Energy — the only independent startup to succeed against the established companies and academies.

If that was all they did, they wouldn’t have their own article. But one thing these solid-fuel ventures all like to do is promise that they’ll build a real liquid-fueled rocket later, and CAS Space has followed through and done it. They sent their Kinetica-2 on its maiden flight in 2026, and it actually worked. They successfully orbited a prototype for a new cargo carrier for bringing stuff to the Tiangong space station at lower cost than the government’s Tianzhou carrier, though with a smaller capacity. They call this prototype Qīngzhōu (轻舟 ), which means “light boat” and references a famous poem which says that the light boat has already passed ten thousand mountains.

The Kinetica-2 is not a small rocket. It’s actually heavier on the pad than a Falcon 9, though it can lift substantially less. One reason for this is probably its odd design, which uses three booster cores even in its most minimal configuration, like a Falcon Heavy or a Delta IV Heavy. And for their own “heavy” version, they plan to use five booster cores instead of three, like an Angara A5. Each core has three YF-102 engines, which they buy from the Academy of Aerospace Liquid Propulsion Technology, which is a division of China’s biggest aerospace contractor. Just like their rivals Space Pioneer, they plan to use these YF-102 engines just as a temporary stopgap until their own motors are ready. I have not heard of them planning to make anything using just a single core, probably because they’d have nothing they can use as a second stage on it. The upper stage they’ve got uses a vacuum-belled version of the YF-102.

Kinetica/Lijian-1: mass 135 t, diam 2.65 m, thrust unknown, imp unknown, solid fuel, payload 2 t? (1.5%), cost unknown, record 10/0/1 through March 2026.

Kinetica/Lijian-2 (three booster cores): mass 625 t, diam unknown, thrust 2500 kN, imp 2.8 km/s, gas generator (kerosene), payload 12 t (1.9%), cost unknown, record 1/0/0 through April 2026.