Photo: Courtesy of LandSpace

China's National Space Administration (CNSA) has set up a commercial space development department to oversee the nation's rapidly growing commercial space industry, a positive move that an expert says will promote healthier, high-quality development and benefit the entire industrial chain.

The newly established department is gradually carrying out its work, marking the arrival of a dedicated regulatory body for China's commercial space industry, the Xinhua News Agency reported.

China's commercial space sector has achieved historical leaps through coordinated innovation across the whole industrial chain in recent years. There are more than 600 commercial space enterprises in China, steadily unlocking the sector's potential in a safe manner, the report said, citing a CNSA official.

Against this backdrop, the establishment of a dedicated regulatory department will enhance coordination, prevent disorderly competition, review companies' space capabilities, assess project safety and plan the sector strategically on a national scale, Wang Yanan, editor-in-chief of Aerospace Knowledge magazine, told the Global Times on Saturday.

The CNSA on Tuesday released the Action Plan for Promoting the High-Quality and Safe Development of Commercial Space (2025-27). By 2027, China will establish a highly coordinated commercial space ecosystem, ensure safe and orderly research and production, significantly expand the scale of the industry, markedly enhance innovation vitality, achieve unified planning and efficient utilization of resources and capabilities and substantially improve industry governance, according to the plan.

The outlook for China's commercial space sector is promising with the positive national regulatory and planning. Further progress by leading companies such as LandSpace and Galactic Energy in areas including rocket payload capacity and reusable launch technology will help them unlock significant market opportunities, Wang said.

Chinese commercial aerospace company LandSpace is preparing for the maiden flight of its Zhuque-3 (ZQ 3) rocket, China's first reusable orbital-class launch vehicle. If successful, ZQ 3 would make China the second country in the world, only after the US, to achieve reusable rocket technology.

LandSpace aims to reduce launch costs by the ZQ-3 to below 20,000 yuan per kilogram. The rocket is expected to overcome technical bottlenecks in "orbit + recovery" flight tests, paving the way for flexible and mature reusable launch operations and supporting the dense deployment of thousands of satellites annually in the future, the company said.