On July 10 at 4:17 am, the very first Kuaizhou 11 rocket launched from Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northern China.

Kuaizhou is a family of Chinese “quick-reaction” orbital launch vehicles that have been in use since 2013. The name “Kuai Zhou” stands for “fast vessel”.

Originally planned for its first flight in 2018, the Kuaizhou-11 (KZ-11) is a commercial three-stage launch vehicle that is launched from a transporter-erector-launcher, also known as a TEL. The three stages are solid-fueled and are thought to be based on the DF-31 missile.

The first two stages appear to have performed properly, but the third stage reportedly failed to ignite, resulting in the loss of both payloads:

• Jilin-1 Gaofen-02E (BilibiliSat): one of a series of Chinese commercial remote sensing satellites for high definition video in the Jilin-1 constellation, which is owned by the Chang Guang Satellite Technology Co. It featured an imaging system with a resolution of 0.75 meters in panchromatic mode, better than 3 meters in multispectral mode, an image swath of 40 km from a 535 km high orbit. The satellites operate in push-broom mode and are capable of imaging up to 45 degrees off-track.
• CentiSpace-1 S2 (Xiangrikui 2): a Chinese commercial small satellite belonging to a Beijing-base company called Future Navigation. The satellite was to test GNSS augmentation techniques, including a laser inter-satellite communication link. This satellite’s predecessor, CentiSpace-1 S1 (Xiangrikui 1) was launched in 2018 on a Kuaizhou-1A.

More Information

Xinhua news article 

Spaceflight Now article 

Kuaizhou-11 info page (Gunter’s Space Page)