Galactic Energy, a Beijing-based private rocket maker, conducted the second flight of its Ceres 2, a new model of solid-propellant carrier rocket, on Saturday morning.

The company said in a news release that the rocket lifted off at 7:37 am from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in Northwest China and then deployed four satellites in a sun-synchronous orbit at an altitude of 535 kilometers.

The four satellites will be used to carry out various operations such as collecting meteorological data and demonstrating new technologies, it noted.

According to Galactic Energy, Ceres 2 has three solid-propellant core stages and a liquid-fueled upper stage and weighs 100 tons. It is capable of transporting satellites with an overall weight of 1.6 tons to a low-Earth orbit at an altitude of 500 kilometers, or 1.3 tons of payloads to a sun-synchronous orbit with the same altitude.

The first Ceres 2 mission took place in January at the Jiuquan spaceport, aiming to deploy six commercial satellites and two experimental equipment. However, the flight failed due to technical malfunctions.

By now, Galactic Energy has developed three types of rockets — Ceres 1, Ceres 2, and Pallas 1 — and has carried out 27 missions and transported a total of 94 commercial satellites into space.