“A historic breakthrough” is how China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) described Friday’s result: for the first time, a Chinese reusable rocket landed successfully. The Long March 10B launched from the Hainan commercial spacecraft launch site in south China’s Hainan Province. After its two stages separated, the first stage came back and was caught upright on a sea-borne net-capture platform.
The rocket also put a satellite into “its predetermined orbit,” state news agency Xinhua reported.
CASC said in a statement: “Approximately six minutes after the first and second stages separated, the first stage returned vertically and was successfully recovered at a sea-based recovery platform using a net system.” It added that the result “will lay a solid foundation for accelerating the improvement of my country’s space access capabilities.” The launch and first-stage recovery missions were “a complete success,” CASC said.
Not quite a Falcon 9
The Independent noted that the Long March 10B has been compared to the SpaceX Falcon 9. The comparison only goes so far. The Chinese rocket does not land on deployable legs, whether on a ship or on a ground pad. Xinhua reported that 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 that matters. Net-based recovery, he said, simplifies the onboard structure, reduces vehicle mass and increases payload capacity. It also copes well with landing-point deviations, since coordinated net systems can effectively expand the capture window.
CALT, the country’s main state rocket developer, built the vehicle. It stands approximately 63m (206ft) tall with a diameter of 5m (16ft), runs on liquid fuel and is made for commercial launches. The first stage burns kerosene and liquid oxygen, and the second stage uses liquid oxygen and liquid methane, according to CALT. Payload capacity is at least 16 metric tons to low-Earth orbit.
The wider race
SpaceX demonstrated rocket recovery in 2015, and Blue Origin, owned by Jeff Bezos, followed in November last year. SpaceX has launched its Falcon 9 nearly 150 times a year and has reused recovered rockets dozens of times. China, by the Independent’s account, has spent nearly a decade on reusable rockets, starting with low-altitude space vehicles and moving on to long-range orbital-class booster recovery.
State media said China plans to fly the Long March 10B’s booster stage again by the end of this year.
