Chinese space program
national space program of the People's Republic of China
China has one of the most active space programs in the world. With launch vehicles of the Long March rocket family and four spaceports (Jiuquan, Taiyuan, Xichang, Wenchang), China conducts the most or second most orbital launches each year, and is one of three countries with a human spaceflight capability. China's fleet of over 1,300 Earth orbit satellites serves communication, navigation, reconnaissance and scientific research. China Manned Space Program operates Tiangong, one of two active space stations alongside the International Space Station (ISS).
Most space operations are conducted by civilian China National Space Administration (CNSA) and the military People's Liberation Army Aerospace Force (PLAASF).
CNSA has achieved robotic rover, lander, and orbiter missions to the Moon and Mars.
PLAASF directs the Astronaut Corps and its Deep Space Network.
From the 1950s, aided by the Soviet Union, development began on China's nuclear weapons, Dongfeng ballistic missiles, and Long March rockets, honored as the Two Bombs, One Satellite projects. Despite setbacks from the Cultural Revolution and Sino-Soviet split, China became the fifth country to independently launch a satellite, Dong Fang Hong 1 in 1970. China developed the Shenzhou crewed craft from Russia's Soyuz after a 1995 treaty; Shenzhou 5 carried the first Chinese astronaut in 2003.
The public source identifies “Chinese space program” as national space program of the People's Republic of China. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Chinese, space and program.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 3, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q162304. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1970, 1995 and 2003.
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This entry incorporates text from “Chinese space program” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.