On December 29, 2018 at 08:00 UTC the “Long March – 2D” (“Changzheng-2D”) rocket-carrier was launched from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in Jiuquan, Gansu Province, the northwest of China. The rocket orbited 6 “Yunhai-2” atmospheric research satellites and one test spacecraft for China’s planned Hongyan low Earth orbit communications network.

On December 27, 2018 at 02:07 UTC the "Soyuz-2.1a” rocket-carrier was launched from Russian Vostochny Cosmodrome, in the Amur Oblast, in the Russian Far East. The rocket equipped with the “Fregat-M” upper stage orbited 28 satellites. The main payload is the “Kanopus-V” numbers 5 and 6 Earth observation satellites which will assist the Russian government in disaster response, mapping and forest fire detection. The secondary payloads are the satellites from Germany (iSAT, UWE-4 and Sparrow), Japan (GRUS), Spain (Lume), South Africa (Zacube), 12 Earth-observing CubeSats and eight commercial weather nanosatellites for Planet and Spire.