China’s Wenchang Space Launch Site has achieved a historic milestone by completing 12 successful launch missions throughout 2025, establishing a new benchmark for the nation’s space operations capabilities. The facility, located in Hainan province, concluded its record-breaking year on December 31st with a Long March 7A rocket deployment that successfully placed the Shijian 29A and 29B satellites into predetermined orbit.
This achievement represents a significant acceleration in China’s space launch tempo, with the November 30th mission having already marked the first time the spaceport reached double-digit annual launches. Since commencing operations in 2016, Wenchang has executed 45 space missions, demonstrating a consistently increasing launch frequency that underscores China’s advancing position in space technology.
As China’s first independently designed green spaceport featuring modern infrastructure, Wenchang operates two all-weather launch platforms specifically engineered for medium and large cryogenic-liquid rockets. Space officials attribute the enhanced launch capacity to substantially improved operational efficiency, primarily achieved through revolutionary reductions in rocket testing cycles on the launchpads.
Wang Yuliang, a senior official at the facility, emphasized that ‘minimizing the rocket’s on-pad occupation time has been crucial to our success.’ The evolution has been remarkable: the launch cycle for the 2017 Tianzhou 1 mission required approximately 40 days, which was streamlined to over 30 days for the 2021 Tianzhou 2 launch, and further reduced to about 20 days for Tianzhou 4 in 2022.
Technical teams have implemented numerous innovations including process optimization, task integration, redundancy elimination, and installation simplification. Between missions, engineers conducted comprehensive equipment upgrades and maintenance to ensure system reliability. According to Commander Fu Yihang, propellant handling efficiency has tripled through the addition of tankers and implementation of parallel transfer operations.
Space experts indicate that these operational refinements position Wenchang as a critical asset for China’s ambitious future space projects, including crewed lunar missions and deep-space exploration programs that will demand even higher launch frequencies and operational precision.