BEIJING, July 12 — China’s Long March 10B lifted off from the Wenchang Commercial Space Launch Site in Hainan province on Friday and, about six minutes after stage separation, its first stage descended onto a sea-based recovery vessel and was captured by a tensioned wire net — the country’s first controlled recovery of a carrier rocket’s first stage and, according to state media, the first orbital-class rocket recovery ever performed with a wire-net capture system.
The two-stage vehicle, developed by the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology (CALT) under the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC), lifted off at 12:15 p.m. local time. The maiden-flight configuration stands about 63 metres tall, weighs roughly 760 tonnes at liftoff and generates approximately 890 tonnes of thrust from seven YF-100K engines burning liquid oxygen and kerosene. Its second stage uses a YF-219 liquid oxygen–methane engine. In its reusable configuration, the rocket is designed to place up to 16 tonnes into low Earth orbit.
Following separation, the first stage coasted, adjusted its attitude and reignited three engines, throttling to a single engine for terminal braking as it approached the offshore platform “Linghangzhe” roughly 430 kilometres downrange. Rather than deploying landing legs, the booster hooked onto a cross-shaped array of pretensioned steel cables mounted on rail-guided sliders that repositioned themselves during descent to widen the effective capture window.
Chen Muye of CASC told official media that “net-based recovery simplifies the onboard structure, reduces weight, and boosts payload capacity,” adding that the arrangement is tolerant of small landing deviations. The 144-metre-by-50-metre recovery vessel, delivered by CALT in November 2025, has a full-load displacement of about 25,000 tonnes and uses corner-mounted lidar units to track the returning booster’s position in real time.
The mission also delivered a test satellite into an 800-kilometre low Earth orbit and was the 657th launch in the Long March series. Officials said the flight validated a range of technologies central to reusability across the Long March 10 family, including baffled-tank propellant management, multiple engine restarts, methane autogenous pressurisation and high-precision navigation and control. The Long March 10A — a human-rated variant that shares much of the core-stage architecture — completed a low-altitude verification test in February with a controlled splashdown in the South China Sea and is expected to make its first orbital flight before the end of the year.
Two earlier Chinese attempts at comparable recoveries had come close but failed in the final phase, according to state media accounts: LandSpace’s ZQ-3 and the Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology’s Long March 12A, both of which encountered difficulties during their respective landing burns in late 2025. With Friday’s flight, the Long March 10B becomes the first Chinese launch vehicle to complete the full profile of controlled return, vertical terminal descent and intact retrieval. Partial reusability with propulsive landings on land or on autonomous drone ships has been in operational service on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 for several years.
The development team said it aims to refly the recovered first stage before the end of 2026, a step that would move the programme from a successful demonstration toward routine reuse. Project leaders said the technology is intended to support high-cadence launches for upcoming low Earth orbit satellite constellations and large commercial missions.
