In the modern space race, not only getting into orbit is becoming more and more important, and the cost of each kilogram of payload. That is why the first flight of the Chinese commercial rocket Kinetica-2 attracted special attention: 30 March 2026 In 2018, the carrier of the CAS Space company successfully launched from the Dongfeng site at the Jiuquan Cosmodrome and launched three vehicles into orbit: New March-01, New March-02 and educational satellite TS-01.
For reference: CAS Space (Guangzhou Zhongke Aerospace Exploration Technology Co., Ltd.) is a leading Chinese commercial aerospace company, founded in 2018 year, which functions under the auspices of the Academy of Sciences of the People's Republic of China. It specializes in the development of launch vehicles, such as Kinetica–1 and Kinetica-2, to launch satellites, and also develops technologies for reusable missiles.
Kinetica-2 is a two-stage high-altitude liquid rocket 53 m with starting mass 625 t and load up to 12 t to low Earth orbit or to 8 t in a 500-kilometer sun-synchronous orbit. CAS Space positions it as a carrier for mass deployment of satellite groups, inexpensive cargo missions and promising orbital services. The company is also betting on the modular architecture of the Common Booster Core, in which the central unit and side accelerators are maximally unified.
The peculiarity of this launch lies in its cost. In the words of CAS Space Vice President Yang Haoliang, the current launch price of the Kinetica-2 in a non-renewable configuration is approx 4350 dollars per kilogram. After implementing reusables, the company expects to reduce it by about half. At the same time, a direct comparison with SpaceX remains tentative: Falcon-9 is already a proven reusable system, and the official standard price of its launch until the end 2026 year declared at the level 74 million dollars at maximum load to 22 t of LEO. So at the moment it is more correct not to talk about the possible advantage of China, and about a serious application for price competition in the segment of medium-heavy media.
The Kinetica-2 is a large liquid-fueled rocket, which consists of typical building blocks. Instead of doing many different parts each time, the company unifies the main modules, engines and systems. This simplifies production, speeds up assembly and lowers the price. The next step is to teach the first stage to return for reuse. It is reuse, as the experience of SpaceX showed, is the main way to reduce the cost of access to space. If CAS Space really reduces the price of launches, this could make astronomical instruments launch more frequently, atmospheric monitoring devices and platforms for testing new space technologies.
Source: https://universemagazine.com