China's first stackable satellite reaches orbit on solid rocket launch

HELSINKI — A light-lift solid rocket sent an experimental "plate-like" stackable satellite into orbit late Thursday as the country looks to build its answer to Starlink. A Kuaizhou-1A solid rocket lifted off from a TEL into blue skies above the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the Gobi Desert at 10:35 p.m. June 8. The China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation (CASIC) confirmed launch success a short time later. Aboard the flight was the Longjiang-3 experimental stackable communications satellite, jointly developed by a commercial satellite company and its parent entity, the Harbin Institute of Technology (HIT), in Northeast China. The Harbin…