The rocket caught itself in a net. About six minutes after the first and second stages of China’s Long March 10B separated, the spent booster came down vertically onto a ship waiting in the South China Sea and was grabbed by cables.
The rocket lifted off at 12:15 pm Beijing time on July 10 from the Hainan commercial space launch site and placed its satellite payload in the intended orbit. Global Times called the booster recovery China’s first controlled recovery of a launch vehicle’s first stage, and the world’s first net-based recovery of a launch vehicle. It also described China as the second country to master vertical rocket recovery.
How the booster came down
Seven YF-100K engines drive the first stage, burning liquid oxygen and kerosene. They ran for about two and a half minutes before shutting down for separation, according to Friends of NASA. The second stage, on liquid oxygen and methane, carried on to orbit.
The booster dropped away at about 100 kilometers altitude, roughly 150 seconds after liftoff, and began its descent at several times the speed of sound. Wang Cong, a rocket designer at the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology (CALT), described four stages of return: coasting and attitude adjustment, powered deceleration, aerodynamic deceleration, and landing.
Grid fins fold out early to set the reentry angle, and a propellant management system settles the fuel at the bottom of the tanks so the engine can relight. The engine fires again to slow the stage before thick air arrives. Then the fins and drag do the braking while the base takes heavy heating. Near the end, a “near-hover” control strategy takes over, with engines and fins working together and an online trajectory planner producing the best control sequence. Friends of NASA said three engines made the final burn before one finished the job.
The net
Waiting was a vessel named Linghangzhe, more than 300 kilometers from the launch site. The ship is 144 meters long, 50 meters wide, draws 5.5 meters and displaces 25,000 tons when fully loaded. DP2 dynamic positioning lets its thrusters hold position against wind, waves and current.
Sun Zhenlian, a CALT technical expert, called the capture a “two-way rendezvous.” The rocket feeds velocity and position data to its controller while the platform watches the stage and moves the cables on pulleys. A hooking mechanism on the rocket meets four cross-grid cables. “The hooking mechanism is like a pair of powerful hands that firmly grasp the rocket,” Sun said. Auxiliary cables then hold the body from several directions and an automatic locking platform slides beneath to clamp it. “It is like fastening a safety belt around the rocket,” he said.
Chen Muye, also of CALT, listed the advantages. With no landing legs, the rocket weighs less and can carry more payload. The net tolerates larger landing errors, and the system can be built in modules for rockets of different sizes. Most reusable rockets elsewhere use landing legs.
The vehicle
CALT, a subsidiary of the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation, led development. The rocket is 5 meters in diameter and about 63 meters long on its maiden flight. Liftoff thrust is about 890 metric tons and liftoff mass around 760 metric tons. In reusable form it can put 16 metric tons into low-Earth orbit. Kan Lei, a CALT rocket technology expert, said that suits low-orbit satellite internet constellations and large commercial satellites.
The flight was the 657th launch of the Long March series and China’s 48th launch of 2026. The development team expects to complete a reused first-stage flight test by the end of this year.
Sources
- China enters rocket recovery era as experts highlight breakthroughs of Long March 10B maiden flight
- China Long March 10B Reusable Rocket Booster Captured with Sea-based Net System
- China Successfully Tests Reusable Long March-10B
