Thousand Sails restarts: Capacity is king! News on April 10 (Yan Yi) After a seven-month window period, Shanghai Yuanxin s Qianfan Constellation has once again launched the launch network. At 21:32 on April 7, 2026, at the Hainan Commercial Space Launch Site, the Long March 8 carrier rocket sent the seventh batch of networking satellites of the Qianfan Constellation into the predetermined orbit in the eighteen stars with one arrow method. The launch was a complete success. This is after the sixth batch of launches on July 30, 2025, the Qianfan Constellation has restarted the network again, and the deployment rhythm is back on track. Transport capacity remains the biggest constraint For Shanghai Yuanxin, the biggest problem in the past six months has not been satellite manufacturing, but rocket transport capacity. Domestic commercial aerospace has entered a critical window period for large-scale development, but the supply capacity of launch services lags far behind demand. Zhang Xiaodong, chief designer of Blue Arrow Aerospace s Suzaku 3 reusable rocket, bluntly pointed out: Currently, launch services are far from meeting the construction needs of low-orbit Internet and space computing power in the future, and are a stuck place. His team s calculations show that in order to complete the launch deployment of 220,000 satellites, my country will need an average of 500 medium and large launch vehicles per year in the next 7 to 10 years, and only a small half of the launch missions that meet the definition of medium and large in 2025 will be completed. Zhang Qi, chairman of Shanghai Yuanxin, also emphasized this pain point: Large-capacity, high-reliability, recyclable, low-cost launch vehicles are still in the experimental stage, and resources such as launch, measurement and control are tight, and they cannot yet fully meet the rapid networking needs of mega-constellations. Under the gap between supply and demand, many domestic rocket companies are accelerating their advancement around reusable technology, trying to break the capacity bottleneck faced by commercial constellation networking. As the first liquid oxygen methane rocket in China to carry out orbit-entry one-stage recovery verification, Blue Arrow Aerospace's Zhuque 3 completed its first flight in December 2025 and successfully entered orbit. Although the first-stage recovery did not meet expectations, key full-process flight data was obtained. Blue Arrow Aerospace will make every effort to achieve the recovery goal in the first half of 2026, and plans to attempt reuse flight for the first time in the fourth quarter. Lijian-2, a subsidiary of China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation, successfully made its first flight at the end of March 2026, becoming my country's first medium-to-large liquid rocket using a universal booster core configuration. Tianlong-3, a subsidiary of Tianbing Technology, suffered an abnormal failure during its first flight on April 3, 2026, and the large capacity verification and recovery schedule was postponed. Pallas 1, a subsidiary of Galaxy Power, is expected to make its first flight in the first half of 2026. The main engine CQ-90 of Pallas 2 has completed full system hot testing at the beginning of the year and plans to make its first flight by the end of the year. Interstellar Glory's Hyperbolic 3 also plans to launch into orbit and recover at sea for the first time at the end of 2026. In addition, the national team Long March 12A made its first flight at the end of 2025. The first-level recovery was unsuccessful. Its brother model, the Long March 12B, is scheduled to perform its first flight in Jiuquan in the first half of 2026, further enriching the product lineage of my country's high-capacity rockets. Despite the rapid progress, Zhang Xiaodong remained calm: my country's progress in reusing rockets is still a certain distance away from engineering applications. The reused one-stage rocket in our country has not been recycled yet. Can it be reused soon? His initial understanding is: It is still far away. Deterministic large transport capacity is more urgent than recyclable. Although recyclable rockets are widely regarded as cost reduction paths, for Shanghai Yuanxin, who is in the critical window period of networking, time is more scarce than cost. Whether it can achieve initial global coverage in 2026 will directly determine its commercialization process and market competitiveness. Therefore, stable, scheduleable, and large-capacity launch services are far more realistic than unengineered recovery technologies. Shanghai Yuanxin s latest actions also confirm its determination to accelerate commercialization. On March 11, 2026, Shanghai United Assets disclosed that Shanghai Yuanxin is about to launch a new round of capital increase. It was previously rumored that the financing scale would reach 5-6 billion yuan, and the pre-investment valuation exceeded 40 billion yuan. As of April 7, the Qianfan Constellation has launched 126 networking satellites and initially built a ground measurement and operation control network. It is expected to achieve initial global coverage in 2026. In terms of commercial verification, Qianfan Constellation has completed the Hong Kong cruise satellite Internet test with China Mobile (Hong Kong) to verify maritime communication capabilities. Overseas, Qianfan Constellation has entered the countdown to commercial services in cooperation with Telebras of Brazil, and is promoting cooperation with National Telecom of Thailand and MEASAT of Malaysia. Faced with industry congestion, Zhang Qi clearly put forward a number of suggestions: launch main model rocket products with high capacity and low cost as soon as possible; increase the layout of launch sites and launch station facilities, establish a dynamic adjustment mechanism for launch schedules; increase support for intelligent and batch manufacturing of satellites; and establish and improve a risk hedging system that conforms to the characteristics of low-orbit constellations. Before recyclable rockets can truly achieve normalized high-frequency launches, using existing mature transportation capacity to build a network and laying a solid foundation through capital operations are Shanghai Yuanxin s pragmatic and urgent choices in the fierce global competition