On Friday, China marked a significant advancement in its quest to become a leader in 21st-century space exploration by successfully launching and retrieving the first stage of its Long March 10B orbital rocket during its inaugural flight.
This achievement places China among an exclusive group, joining U.S.-based aerospace companies SpaceX and Blue Origin as the only entities globally to have developed and operated reusable rocketry. Remarkably, China distinguished itself by executing the world’s first flawless first-stage booster recovery on a maiden launch.
The Long March 10B, developed by the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology, an affiliate of the state-owned China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC), lifted off on July 10 at 12:15 A.M. EDT from the Wenchang Commercial Space Launch Site in Hainan province. Approximately 11 minutes after launch, following the deployment of an undisclosed satellite payload, the rocket’s first stage returned to Earth, using its engines to slow and control its descent into a unique net-based recovery system on a sea-based platform.
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“This mission marks our country’s first successful controlled recovery of a launch vehicle and the world’s first [net]-based recovery of a launch vehicle,” CASC announced in a subsequent social media post (as translated by Google). “It signifies a historic breakthrough for our country in the field of reusable rocket technology and will lay a solid foundation for accelerating the improvement of our country’s space access capabilities.”
The announcement also indicated that China intends to reuse the booster from this initial flight in another mission later this year.
With a height of 63 meters and a five-meter-wide payload fairing, the rocket bears some resemblance to SpaceX’s partially reusable Falcon 9, which is seven meters taller but has a comparable fairing size. Unlike SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy or Blue Origin’s New Glenn, the Long March 10B does not have landing legs. Instead, it uses four lightweight “landing hooks” to latch onto its recovery net.
Designed to carry 16,000 kilograms into low-Earth orbit, this rocket is a commercial variant of the Long March 10A. The Long March 10A was initially designed for transporting crews and cargo to low-Earth orbit locations, such as China’s Tiangong space station. Both are derivatives of the Long March 10, a large rocket under development to send Chinese astronauts to the moon, a goal set for 2030. This timeline is in competition with NASA’s Artemis program, which aims for a crewed lunar return by 2028. The Long March 10B is expected to play a critical role in China’s efforts to establish vast satellite megaconstellations akin to SpaceX’s successful Starlink system, which surpassed 10,000 active satellites earlier this year.
Even if the recent flight had encountered difficulties, China has other reusable rockets ready for future missions. Two other vehicles—the state-developed Long March 12A and the Zhuque-3 rocket from the state-backed company Landspace—have conducted test flights in the past year. Neither has yet demonstrated a successful first-stage booster recovery, and several other Chinese initiatives are in the early stages of developing reusable rockets. Additional flights of the Zhuque-3 and Long March 12A are anticipated, though the timeline remains uncertain due to China’s tendency to keep future plans confidential.
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