The People’s Republic of China is actively increasing its satellite constellation. If earlier SpaceX sent Starlink system devices into orbit like machine guns, now China is starting to catch up with Elon Musk’s company.

On Friday, September 20, China launched separate sets of Earth observation and Internet of Things satellites into orbit as part of two separate missions.

The Long March 2D rocket was the first to launch from the Taiyuan Cosmodrome in the country’s north. It was carrying six remote-sensing satellites from Changguang Satellite Technology (CGST), the commercial arm of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The new instruments join the Jilin-1 CGST constellation, which will consist of 300 satellites once deployed.

The second launch came just under six hours later, with the Kuaizhou 1A solid-fuel rocket launching from the Xichang Space Center in southwest China.

The rocket carried four Tianqi satellites, numbered 29-32, owned by Chinese commercial satellite operator Guodian Gaoke. The new devices provide low-bandwidth communications to connect IoT devices (device-to-device data networks) in remote or hard-to-reach areas of the Celestial Empire.