BEIJING, July 10 — China’s Long March rocket family, the workhorse of the country’s space ambitions, is now over five decades old and shifting toward a reusable future that could slash launch costs dramatically, according to the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC). The economic stakes are clear. CASC officials have stated that the shift to reusability aims to reduce launch costs by up to 80%.
For a family that has conducted over 500 launches as of July 2024, with an overall success rate exceeding 95%, that kind of cost reduction would reshape the global launch market.
From a single satellite to a fleet of variants
The Long March story began on April 24, 1970, when the Long March 1 launched China’s first satellite, Dong Fang Hong 1. Since then, CASC has developed more than 20 variants across the Long March 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9 series. The Long March 5, which first launched in November 2016, is a heavy-lift rocket with a payload capacity of 25 metric tons to low Earth orbit.
It has been used for the Chang’e lunar missions and the Tianhe space station core module. That capability is central to China’s stated goal of landing astronauts on the Moon by 2030.
Reusability: the Long March 8 and beyond
The Long March 8, first launched in December 2020, marked China’s first partially reusable rocket, featuring a reusable first stage and boosters. That design built toward the Long March 10B, which represents a full reusable design, drawing on lessons from the Long March 8R test flights. CASC has not released specific cost-per-kilogram figures for the Long March family in public documents, but data from the industry shows that reusability is the dominant trend among major launch providers globally.
The Long March 10B’s full reusable architecture positions CASC to compete directly with other reusable systems now entering service. The company said the Long March 8R test flights provided critical data for the transition to fully reusable vehicles.
Officials noted that the Long March 10B builds directly on those lessons, suggesting a deliberate, stepwise engineering approach rather than a single leap.
What this means for the market
For a journalist covering business and environment from Central Asia, the Long March family’s evolution matters because launch costs determine which countries and companies can afford satellite constellations for agriculture monitoring, water management, and border surveillance. An 80% cost reduction, if achieved, would open the door for more frequent launches by smaller economies. CASC has not announced a specific date for the Long March 10B’s first flight, but the 2030 lunar landing target provides a clear timeline anchor.
The heavy-lift Long March 5 will continue to handle the largest payloads, while the reusable variants target the high-frequency, lower-cost segment of the market. The Long March family’s overall success rate, exceeding 95% across more than 500 launches, gives CASC a strong reliability record to pair with its new cost-reduction push.
That combination — proven reliability plus dramatic cost cuts — is exactly what the commercial launch market has been waiting for.
Looking ahead
The next few years will show whether the Long March 10B can deliver on its full reusable design and whether the 80% cost reduction target holds in operational service. For now, CASC has laid out a clear technical path: from the Long March 1 in 1970 to the Long March 8R test flights, and now to the Long March 10B. The shift to reusability is not just a technical upgrade.
It is an economic strategy, one that could redefine which countries can afford to participate in the space economy. For Central Asia, where satellite data increasingly drives decisions on water and crop management, that could be the most important development of all.
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