The Chinese didn't invent the rocket but they came remarkably close. More than a thousand years ago, during the Song Dynasty, Chinese engineers were packing black powder into bamboo tubes and launching fire arrows that hissed across battlefields on jets of smoke and flame. Those crude devices were the distant ancestors of every launch vehicle that has ever punched through Earth's atmosphere and there's a pleasing symmetry in the fact that, today, China operates one of the most capable and ambitious space programmes on the planet. From its first satellite in 1970 to a fully operational crewed space station orbiting overhead right now, the journey has been extraordinary. And in 2026, it's about to get even more interesting.