Smart Dragon 3

Jielong 3 was developed at the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology through China Rocket, the arm created to compete in the commercial small-launch market. The design follows a cost-and-cadence logic: four solid stages, 31 metres tall, 2.65 metres in diameter, 145 tonnes at lift-off and no cryogenic operations to complicate the launch campaign. Reusing the same motors as the Zhongke-1 let the programme draw on an existing production line rather than start from scratch.

The debut came on 9 December 2022 at 06:35 UTC from a converted barge, the Tai Rui, stationed in the East China Sea. The mission succeeded and deployed fourteen small satellites into polar orbit, among them several Jilin-1 Gaofen and Pingtai spacecraft, HEAD 2H, Qilu-1 05 and 06, Tianqi 07, Huoju 1 and CAS 5A. It was a deliberate demonstration of the vehicle's multi-payload deployment capability.

The capacity announced at first was 1,560 kilograms to a 500-kilometre Sun-synchronous orbit, a figure raised to 1,600 kilograms by the fifth flight on 13 January 2025. That same month Gao Lijun, of the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC), said further improvements were planned with the goal of eventually carrying two metric tons to that orbit.

Since the maiden flight, Jielong 3 has accumulated eleven launches with eleven successes and no failures, the most recent on 11 April 2026. The barge fleet has migrated from the East China Sea to the South China Sea and finally to Yellow Sea waters off Rizhao and Haiyang Port. Its manifest has alternated institutional payloads — Earth observation satellites, the CentiSpace-1 navigation augmentation constellation — with commercial customers such as GeeSat and with test satellites for China's satellite internet networks. A further flight, Y12, was listed as planned for June 2026.