Pallas-1 Expected to Debut in August, Developer Raising Funds
One of China's smaller to-be-reusable launch vehicles is almost ready to fly for the first time.
Representatives of commercial launch provider Galactic Energy attended a space industry forum hosted in Wuxi (无锡市), Jiangsu (江苏) province, on July 17th to share insights and discuss challenges with fellow space firms and government officials. Part of that involved a speech on opportunities with launch vehicles, which disclosed a brief update on partially reusable Pallas-1.
While hailing the successful recovery of the Long March 10B’s first-stage and highlighting Galactic Energy’s routine flights with Ceres-1, company Executive President Xia Dongkun (夏东坤) announced that Pallas-1 will make its first flight in ‘mid-to-late’ August, about three weeks from today. Previously, Galactic Energy has only hinted that the vehicle will fly ‘in the near future’.
In May, Pallas-1 was acknowledged to be at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center for testing with a dedicated launch pad, transporter-erector, commodity systems, and preparation in a horizontal integration building for final pre-flight tests. Those tests saw the 42-meter-tall launch vehicle moved upright for the first time after many months of production.
Last year, both stages of the launch vehicle completed static fires to prove flight-like burns and sequences. The second-stage with its single rocket-grade kerosene and liquid oxygen-burning CQ-50 engine was tested first in September with a four-minute firing. Then in November, seven CQ-50’s ignited for the first-stage static fire to demonstrate their parallel operation.
As for first-stage booster recovery, no landing attempt will be performed during the debut flight due to the lack of relevant installed hardware. Galactic Energy has said that progress has been made on restartable CQ-50 engines, landing legs, and grid fins for use with future Pallas-1’s that are already in production and supposedly ready to ship out.
Amid preparations to fly the first Pallas-1, Galactic Energy has been securing new capital investment for a new funding round that should support further flights of the vehicle. This month has seen nine firms, some private and most government-linked, commit varied amounts in the high tens to hundreds of millions of Yuan. Cumulatively so far it is at least 400 million Yuan (59 million United States Dollars, as of July 22nd).
Last time Galactic Energy completed a funding round was September 2025, when it raised 2.4 billion Yuan (354.5 million United States Dollars) from a large cohort of municipal and provincial governments, among some private venture capital entities.
