China recovered its first reusable rocket and showed a new way to do it - Ars Technica
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China’s sprawling state-owned rocket developer, maker of the country’s Long March rocket family, announced it recovered a reusable orbital-class booster for the first time Friday in the South China Sea.
The milestone mission began with the liftoff of a Long March 10B rocket from the Wenchang Commercial Space Launch Site on Hainan Island, China’s southernmost province. Powered by seven kerosene-fueled engines, the approximately 209-foot-tall (63.6-meter) rocket took off at 12:15 am EDT (04:15 UTC), or 12:15 pm local time at the seaside spaceport at Wenchang.
About 10 minutes later, the Long March 10B booster descended from space and guided itself into a four-legged frame affixed to an offshore vessel. Tensioned cables stretched over the ship in a grid pattern captured the rocket as it shut down its landing engines, leaving the smoldering booster hanging in midair. The rocket’s upper stage continued into orbit and deployed a payload known only as CX-26. Chinese officials hailed the flight as a “complete success.”
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“A historic day in China’s space program!” wrote Mao Ning, a spokesperson for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, on X. “China’s Long March 10B has successfully completed its maiden flight—and recovered its first stage via a sea-based net. This marks the country’s first-ever controlled rocket recovery. A major leap toward reusable launch capabilities.”
The landing on Friday makes the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) and its subsidiary, the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology (CALT), the third enterprise to accomplish this feat. SpaceX did it with its Falcon 9 rocket in 2015 and with its Starship/Super Heavy booster in 2024. Blue Origin landed its New Glenn booster on an offshore platform for the first time last November.
SpaceX and Blue Origin use propulsive landings to return their Falcon 9 and New Glenn boosters to offshore platforms or onshore landing pads. With Starship, SpaceX pioneered a new method of catching the rocket’s reusable booster back at its launch pad using mechanical arms mounted to the launch tower.
The Long March 10B employs a different approach for recovery, combining an offshore vessel floating downrange with the catch technique somewhat like what SpaceX uses for Starship. Catching the rocket in this way reduces the effect of reuse on payload capacity. The Long March 10B doesn’t have to carry the extra mass of landing legs, and recovering it downrange reduces how much fuel the rocket must consume during its descent.
In a statement, CASC said the Long March 10B test flight “validated key core technologies” for a reusable launch architecture, such as multiple engine restarts with high-altitude ignition, high-precision navigation and control, and the first capture and recovery using a net system on a sea-based platform.
A Long March 10B rocket lifts off from Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site on July 10, 2026, in Wenchang, Hainan Province of China.
Credit:<br>Ding Yi/VCG via Getty Images
A Long March 10B rocket lifts off from Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site on July 10, 2026, in Wenchang, Hainan Province of China.
Credit:
Ding Yi/VCG via Getty Images
Friday’s launch was the first flight of the Long March 10B, a medium-lift rocket with a payload capacity of approximately 16 metric tons (35,000 pounds) to low-Earth orbit. This is slightly less than the lift capacity of SpaceX’s Falcon 9. The Long March 10B has two stages, with seven YF-100K engines on the booster consuming kerosene and liquid oxygen, and a single methane-fueled YF-219 engine on the second stage.
“Moving forward, the Long March 10B development team will continue to optimize the vehicle’s performance and accelerate the iterative upgrading of reusable rocket technologies,” CASC said. “The first stage reuse flight test is expected to be completed by the end of this year.”
The Long March 10B is similar to China’s Long March 10A rocket, which is still awaiting its first full-scale test flight. The Long March 10A has the same first stage booster as the Long March 10B, but a different upper stage and a payload fairing to accommodate cargo and satellites. The Long March 10A, on the other hand, is designed for future crew launches to China’s Tiangong space station using the country’s new human-rated spaceship, the Mengzhou, replacing China’s Shenzhou crew capsule and the Long March 2F rocket used to power it into orbit.
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