Methodology

1. What we include

We cover the space economy — not only commercial spaceflight. That includes private-company funding, launches, contracts and failures; launches, procurement and industrial policy from state-owned enterprises and government agencies; and anything else that changes the size or structure of this market.

One point is easy to get wrong: governments are the largest buyers in this economy. Cutting out state launches distorts the market size you see, and admitting only “commercial payloads” is an allow-list that is really a deny-list — what it misses leaves no trace. So we include everything and tag by provider type, with a one-click filter on the launch tracker for commercial only or government only.

Still excluded: popular-science and astronomy content; academic papers and technical reviews; purely military operations with no procurement or industrial impact.

Note that some items carry no linked company. Agencies such as NASA or ESA are buyers and regulators, not sellers, so they hold no profile in our company database — when the actor is the agency itself, there is no company to link. Where that happens, the item’s “why included” reason must name which body did what in the market; if that cannot be stated concretely, we do not publish it.

Each news item states its “why included” reason so readers can check that we follow this rule.

2. Figures

Every figure must be traceable to a public source, linked on the page. Where no source exists we write “not disclosed” — we do not estimate and we do not cite unnamed “industry insiders”. Valuations, revenue and headcount for private companies are included only when stated by the company, an exchange filing, or a named media report, and we label which. Where sources disagree on a figure’s definition (e.g. net loss vs. net loss attributable to shareholders) we use the official filing’s definition and say so. We do not convert RMB to USD.

3. Facts vs. our take

The factual part of each brief comes from the sources. “Our take” is our own judgement, set apart in its own paragraph and limited to a third of the text. We do not translate source articles wholesale; we extract facts and write our own text.

4. Times

Each item records three times: when the event happened, when the original source published, and when we published. Where a source gives only a date we show only a date. Upcoming launch dates follow the operator’s latest announcement and may change; month-level plans use a mid-month placeholder and say so. All times are Beijing time.

5. Company profiles

Profiles are written from company websites, exchange filings and named media reports, without evaluative adjectives (“leading” and the like). Timelines cover the last 12 months, each entry sourced. Each profile shows its last verification date.

6. The English edition

The English edition covers China’s commercial space sector only. Text is translated from our Chinese edition with machine assistance and spot-checked; where the two differ, the Chinese version prevails. Company and product names follow the companies’ own English usage where one exists (e.g. LandSpace, Zhuque-3, Kinetica-1); otherwise we use pinyin.

7. Backfilled vs. live items

Historical items added when the site launched are labelled “Backfilled”. Their “published here” time is the time they entered the database, does not reflect first-publication speed, and is excluded from the timeliness figures on the metrics page. Items published through the daily workflow carry no such label, and only those count toward timeliness.

8. Corrections

Report errors via the About page. Confirmed corrections appear on the original page in a “Corrections” block with the change and its date; we do not edit silently, and the superseded wording is stated so readers can check it.

9. Analytics and privacy

The site uses its own analytics; requests go only to this domain and no third-party tracking script is loaded. No IP address is stored and no cookie is set. The identifier used to distinguish visitors is a one-way hash of request attributes plus the current date, so it cannot be linked across days or traced back to a person. Beyond that we record only the visitor's country code and whether the request came from an automated crawler (judged from the browser identifier, which itself is not stored).

10. Main sources

Company websites and press releases; filings with the Shanghai Stock Exchange STAR Market, the CSRC, the US SEC, the Tokyo Stock Exchange and Euronext; SpaceNews, Payload, Spaceflight Now, Space.com, NASASpaceflight, European Spaceflight, Via Satellite, Business Wire, GlobeNewswire; and on the Chinese side, named reports from Xinhua, China News Service, The Paper, Sina Finance, 21st Century Business Herald and Taibo. Third-party encyclopedias are not used as sources for key figures.