The Wenchang Space Launch Site is China's coastal spaceport, built on the northeast shore of Hainan island so that rocket stages too wide for the country's railways can arrive by ship.[2][4] It sits at about 19.6 degrees north, closer to the equator than any other Chinese launch site,[3][30] and its rockets fly out over the South China Sea instead of dropping spent stages on land.[3] Since its first launch on June 25, 2016, Wenchang has dispatched all three modules of the Tiangong space station, the Chang'e 5 and Chang'e 6 lunar sample returns, and the Tianwen-1 Mars mission, and it is the departure point for Chang'e 7, scheduled for August 24, 2026.[3][9][10][11][15][28] Since November 30, 2024 the state site has shared the coastline with the adjacent Hainan Commercial Spacecraft Launch Site, China's first commercial spaceport, which opened with the debut of the Long March 12 and is adding two more pads.[18][20]

Chinese state media render the official English name as Wenchang Space Launch Site or Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site, while much English-language coverage calls it the Wenchang Satellite Launch Center; all three names refer to the same state facility.[9][17][32]

Status as of August 2026

Wenchang is preparing its highest-profile launch of the year days after its first failure. Chang'e 7, stacked on a Long March 5, rolled out to the launch area on August 19 for a window opening August 24 Beijing time.[27][28] On August 10 a Long March 7A broke apart about 85 seconds after liftoff from the site, destroying the Zhongxing-4B communications satellite in China's fourth launch failure of 2026; the Long March 5 shares YF-100 engines with the failed rocket, so the investigation has added some risk to the date.[25][28] A Long March 12 flew from the commercial site's pad 2 on August 16 anyway, lofting the 24th Guowang batch and bringing that constellation to 195 satellites; the launch suggested the anomaly was not engine related, though the Long March 7A remains grounded.[26] The commercial site's pads 3 and 4, which broke ground in January 2025, are due to be working by the end of 2026.[20][21]

Why China built a coastal spaceport

Wenchang exists because China's newest rockets outgrew its railways. The country's three older launch sites, Jiuquan, Taiyuan, and Xichang, are landlocked, and the China National Space Administration noted in 2013 that their inland locations made transport inconvenient; stages could only arrive by rail or road.[2] The Long March 5's 5-meter core does not fit through the rail, road, and tunnel network at all, so China built a launch site its heavy rocket could reach by water and two dedicated cargo ships, Yuanwang 21 and 22, to carry stages from the factory in Tianjin.[4] Hardware is unloaded at Qinglan harbor and driven the short distance to the launch site.[31]

Geography supplied two more arguments. At about 19.6 degrees north Wenchang is the closest Chinese site to the equator, where Earth's rotation gives departing rockets a larger boost; CNSA said in 2013 that the fuel saved could extend a geostationary satellite's service life by about three years, and the site's builders have put the payload gain at 10 to 15 percent.[2][3][21][30] Launches also head out over open ocean, so spent boosters fall into the South China Sea rather than downrange onto inhabited territory, a recurring problem for China's inland sites.[3] The State Council and the Central Military Commission approved the project in September 2007 as China's fourth launch site.[1]

History

Construction began in September 2009 and the main facilities were finished by 2014, with the wet tropical climate forcing waterproofing measures and lightning towers that the inland sites never needed.[2][3] The first launch came on June 25, 2016, when the maiden Long March 7 lifted off at 8 p.m. Beijing time; in an unusual move for China's program, authorities set up eight public viewing sites, and thousands of spectators watched from around the base.[3] The Long March 5, China's heaviest rocket, made its debut from the neighboring pad on November 3, 2016.[4]

The young site absorbed a serious setback early. On July 2, 2017, the second Long March 5 lost thrust 346 seconds into flight and crashed into the ocean with the Shijian-18 communications satellite; investigators traced the failure to the exhaust structure of a turbopump on one of the core stage's YF-77 hydrogen engines.[5] The rocket returned to flight from Wenchang on December 27, 2019, delivering Shijian-20 to geostationary transfer orbit and clearing the way for the Mars, lunar sample return, and space station missions that had been waiting on it.[6]

Those missions then came in quick succession: the Long March 5B variant debuted in May 2020 carrying a prototype crew capsule, Tianwen-1 left for Mars that July, Chang'e 5 left for the Moon in November, and the Tianhe station module followed in April 2021.[8][9][10][11] The Long March 8 added a fourth rocket family to the site in December 2020, and its stretched Long March 8A variant first flew from Wenchang in February 2025.[16][17]

Launch complexes

The state site operates two long-standing pads plus a newly built complex for the crewed lunar program, and the adjacent commercial site currently operates two more. Jonathan McDowell's launch site catalogue logs the state pads as LC-101, LC-201, and LC-301 and the commercial pads as LC-1 and LC-2.[30]

PadSiteFirst launchVehicles
LC-101StateNovember 3, 2016 (Long March 5 debut)Long March 5 and 5B[4][30]
LC-201StateJune 25, 2016 (Long March 7 debut)Long March 7, 7A, 8, and 8A[3][16][17][30]
Crewed lunar pad (LC-301)StateFebruary 11, 2026 (Long March 10 flight test)Long March 10 family[23][30]
Pad 1CommercialMarch 11, 2025 (Long March 8, Qianfan satellites)Long March 8 series[18][19]
Pad 2CommercialNovember 30, 2024 (Long March 12 debut)Multiple rocket types, including Long March 12 and the Long March 10B[18][24][26]

Pad 1 was purpose-built for the Long March 8, while pad 2 was designed to serve rockets of different diameters from different suppliers; each was rated for 16 launches a year.[18] Pads 3 and 4, two more liquid-propellant pads, are under construction on 133 hectares next to the first phase.[20]

Missions launched from Wenchang

Wenchang handles the missions that need China's biggest rockets or its southern latitude: station modules and cargo, lunar and planetary probes, geostationary satellites on the Long March 7A, and, increasingly, broadband megaconstellation batches. Tianzhou cargo ships have flown from LC-201 since Tianzhou-1 in April 2017, most recently carrying about 6,500 kilograms of supplies per flight to Tiangong; crews themselves still launch on Shenzhou from Jiuquan.[7][32]

DateMissionSignificance
June 25, 2016Long March 7 debutFirst launch from the site[3]
November 3, 2016Long March 5 debutChina's heaviest rocket enters service[4]
April 20, 2017Tianzhou-1First Chinese cargo spacecraft[7]
May 5, 2020Long March 5B debutCarried a prototype next-generation crew capsule[8]
July 23, 2020Tianwen-1China's first independent Mars mission[9]
November 24, 2020Chang'e 5First Chinese lunar sample return[10]
April 29, 2021TianheTiangong core module[11]
July 24, 2022WentianTiangong's first lab module[12]
October 31, 2022MengtianCompleted the Tiangong assembly launches[13]
March 20, 2024Queqiao-2Lunar relay satellite for far side and polar missions[14]
May 3, 2024Chang'e 6First far side sample return mission[15]
November 30, 2024Long March 12 debutFirst launch from the commercial site[18]
February 11, 2026Long March 10 flight testFirst use of the crewed lunar pad, with a Mengzhou abort test[23]
July 10, 2026Long March 10BOrbital launch and first Chinese sea platform booster landing[24][26]
August 24, 2026 (planned)Chang'e 7Lunar south pole lander, rover, and hopper[27][28]

The commercial launch site

The Hainan Commercial Spacecraft Launch Site occupies the coast just southwest of the state pads.[30] It was built and is operated by Hainan International Commercial Aerospace Launch Co., Ltd. (HICAL), broke ground in July 2022 at a reported cost of over 4 billion yuan (about 553 million dollars), and completed its first phase in 878 days.[18][20] Its first launch, the maiden Long March 12 from pad 2 on November 30, 2024, made it China's first commercial spaceport; pad 1 followed with a Long March 8 carrying Qianfan broadband satellites on March 11, 2025.[18][19]

The site's business so far is dominated by China's two broadband megaconstellations, the state-backed Guowang and the Shanghai-backed Qianfan, flying on the Long March 8, 8A, and 12.[19][26] By early January 2026 the site had put more than 90 satellites into orbit, according to Xinhua.[22] The tempo showed in August 2026, when pad 2 supported a Long March 12 just weeks after hosting the 5-meter Long March 10B, with the rocket occupying the pad for only 2.5 days before launch.[26]

Expansion started before the first phase was a year old. Phase two broke ground on January 25, 2025, adding pads 3 and 4, propellant and gas supply systems, a command center, an assembly building, and a tracking station across roughly 133 hectares; HICAL has also said it is establishing offshore recovery sites for reusable rockets.[20] Site officials expect the new pads to be working by the end of 2026 and project more than 60 launches a year once the build-out is complete.[21]

Crewed lunar launches and future plans

Wenchang is where China intends to stage its crewed lunar landings, targeted before 2030. The program's Long March 10 rocket ran first stage static fires at the site in August and September 2025, and a newly built launch complex hosted the family's first flight on February 11, 2026: a low-altitude test in which a Long March 10 demonstrator flew an uncrewed Mengzhou capsule through China's first maximum dynamic pressure abort test, with both recovered at sea.[23][29] The single-core Long March 10B then reached orbit from the commercial site's pad 2 on July 10, 2026, and landed its first stage on a net-equipped sea platform, China's first booster recovery from an orbital launch.[24][26] The crew-rated Long March 10A's first orbital flight, carrying an uncrewed Mengzhou, is targeted for late 2026 from Wenchang, with uncrewed lunar rehearsals to follow.[29] Once Mengzhou enters service, China's crewed launches are expected to shift to Wenchang from Jiuquan, where every Shenzhou has flown.[23][29]

Launch viewing and tourism

Wenchang is the one Chinese launch site the public can easily watch. The base opened eight viewing sites for its very first launch in 2016, and frequent launches have since built an aerospace-themed tourism trade in the surrounding city: a rocket-viewing platform draws crowds for each liftoff, and visitors fill nearby homestays, restaurants, and cafes or tour the local space science and education center.[3][22]

References

  1. China plans new space launch centre - Al Jazeera, September 24, 2007.
  2. China's fourth space launch center to be in use in two years - China National Space Administration, March 2013.
  3. China's new Long March 7 rocket successful on first flight - Spaceflight Now, June 25, 2016.
  4. Long March 5 launch blasts China into age of heavy-lift rockets - The Planetary Society, November 2016.
  5. China reveals cause of Long March 5 failure; lunar sample mission to follow return-to-flight - SpaceNews, April 2018.
  6. Successful Long March 5 launch opens way for China's major space plans - SpaceNews, December 27, 2019.
  7. Tianzhou 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 (TZ 1, 2, 3, 4, 5) - Gunter's Space Page.
  8. China launches new Long March-5B rocket for space station program - China National Space Administration, May 2020.
  9. Tianwen-1: China successfully launches probe in first Mars mission - China National Space Administration, July 2020.
  10. Chang'e 5 Mission Launch - NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day, November 27, 2020.
  11. Core Module Tianhe - China Manned Space Agency.
  12. Wentian lab module successfully launched - China Manned Space Agency, 2022.
  13. Mengtian Lab Module - China Manned Space Agency.
  14. China launches new relay satellite for Earth-Moon communications - China National Space Administration, March 2024.
  15. China launches Chang'e-6 mission to collect first samples from the moon's far side - SpaceNews, May 2024.
  16. Long March 8 rocket lifts 5 satellites in debut flight - China National Space Administration, December 2020.
  17. China's Long March-8A makes successful inaugural flight - Global Times, February 11, 2025.
  18. China's seaside commercial spacecraft launch site completes first mission - Xinhua, December 1, 2024.
  19. Long March 8 launches Thousand Sails satellites from commercial spaceport - SpaceNews, March 2025.
  20. Hainan's commercial space launch site phase II breaks ground, with two liquid rocket launch pads planned - Global Times, January 25, 2025.
  21. Province building aerospace industrial cluster - China Daily, December 19, 2025.
  22. Rocket launches boost aerospace-themed tourism in Hainan's Wenchang - Xinhua, January 3, 2026.
  23. China tests crewed spacecraft abort and rocket recovery in major lunar milestone - SpaceNews, February 11, 2026.
  24. China's Long March 10B rocket successfully launches, and lands, in a global spaceflight milestone - Scientific American, July 2026.
  25. Chinese Long March 7A rocket explodes shortly after liftoff - SpaceNews, August 10, 2026.
  26. Long March 12 launches despite recent 7A failure, Long March 2C launches satellite for UAE - SpaceNews, August 17, 2026.
  27. China prepares to launch Chang'e-7 lunar probe - Xinhua, August 19, 2026.
  28. China's Chang'e-7 lunar ice-hunting mission set for Sunday launch - SpaceNews, August 20, 2026.
  29. China targets 2026 for first Long March 10 launch, new lunar crew spacecraft flight - SpaceNews.
  30. GCAT: Launch Points - Jonathan McDowell, General Catalog of Artificial Space Objects.
  31. China assembling rocket to launch first space station module - SpaceNews, February 2021.
  32. China launches Tianzhou-9 to Tiangong space station with record cargo and upgraded EVA suits - SpaceNews, July 2025.