China officially launched its Tianwen-2 mission from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center, marking a major step in its growing ambitions in planetary exploration. The mission aims to retrieve samples from a near-Earth asteroid and later study a main-belt comet,

China launches classified Shijan-26 satellite with Long March 4B rocket China carried out its ninth launch of the month early Thursday, sending the secretive Shijian-26 spacecraft into orbit.

Over at the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center in the Shanxi Province, a CZ-6A launched Yaogan 40 Group 02 into polar orbit on May 11. This set a new pad turnaround record, with the launch coming just 22 days after its last mission. The launch campaign for the CZ-6A is reported to have been shortened to just 14 days.