About six minutes after the two stages of China’s Long March 10B separated, the first stage came back down upright and was caught in a net on a platform at sea. China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) said so in a statement on Friday after the rocket’s first flight, which it called a complete success.
“It signifies a historic breakthrough for my country in the field of reusable rocket technology,” CASC said, “and will lay a solid foundation for accelerating the improvement of my country’s space access capabilities.” State news agency Xinhua reported that the rocket also put a satellite into its predetermined orbit. The launch took place at the Hainan commercial spacecraft launch site in south China’s Hainan Province.
Hooks instead of legs
The rocket has been compared with SpaceX’s Falcon 9, but it lands differently. It does not use deployable legs to touch down on a ship or ground pad. According to Xinhua, it uses “landing hooks” to latch onto a net attached to a sea-borne platform.
Chen Muye, an expert at the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology (CALT), told Chinese state media why the approach was chosen. Net-based recovery simplifies the rocket’s onboard structure, cuts vehicle mass and raises payload capacity, he said. It is also “highly adaptable to landing-point deviations,” because coordinated net systems can widen the capture window.
CALT, the country’s main state rocket developer, built the vehicle. It is a reusable, liquid-fueled rocket for commercial launches, standing about 63m (206ft) tall with a 5m (16ft) diameter, and it can carry a payload of at least 16 metric tons to low-Earth orbit. CALT says the first stage burns kerosene and liquid oxygen, while the second stage uses liquid oxygen and liquid methane.
Where China stands
Only two other companies have recovered an orbital booster. SpaceX showed it in 2015, and Jeff Bezos-owned Blue Origin followed in November last year. SpaceX launches its Falcon 9 nearly 150 times a year and has reused recovered rockets dozens of times.
China has spent nearly a decade on reusable rockets, the report says, starting with tests of low-altitude vehicles and moving to long-range, orbital-class booster recovery. State media said the plan is to fly the Long March 10B’s booster stage again before the end of this year.
