China joins US in reusable orbital rocket capability

China has become just the second country after the United States to achieve the controlled recovery of a reusable orbital space rocket.Friday’s successful capture at sea of the booster stage of a Long March-10B rocket after its maiden launch used a novel technique different from that of Elon Musk’s recently listed SpaceX and previous Chinese attempts.Instead of landing using extendable hydraulic legs, the rocket stage used its engines to position itself over a floating platform in the China-sea" class="entity-link entity-location" data-entity-id="8346" data-entity-type="location">South China Sea. A net then closed around it, completing the capture.State broadcaster CCTV said the successful test validated the rocket’s reusable design and was expected to help cut launch costs. The Long March-10B was intended for commercial satellite launches, a technical expert from the rocket’s state-owned designer told Xinhua.The booster’s recovery followed the successful controlled descent in February of a Long March-10A rocket, which splashed down near a recovery vessel. The Long March-10B is a cargo variant of the 10A. Both are being developed and tested by the China-aerospace-science-and-technology-corporation" class="entity-link entity-organization" data-entity-id="151125" data-entity-type="organization">China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC).Friday’s mission followed two failed Chinese attempts to recover a reusable rocket stage on land. In December, the first stage of a Long March-12A rocket, designed by the Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology under CASC, crashed after its engines failed to restart. The same month, a Zhuque-3 rocket launched by private company LandSpace Technology crashed near the target recovery area.Related news: Beijing-based LandSpace Technology this month resumed preparations for an initial public offering (IPO) on Shanghai’s Star market, having suspended the effort temporarily in March. Its updated prospectus shows 2025 revenue rose 11-fold to 52.1 million yuan (US$7.7 million), but net losses widened to 1.71 billion yuan. Its Zhuque-3 reusable rocket successfully completed a static-fire test last month in preparation for a second test launch and recovery attempt. Hong Kong and Macau can help Chinese commercial space companies expand overseas, executives at Beijing-based satellite launch company GalaxySpace said last week. The company is preparing for an IPO in Shanghai. Hong Kong aims to become a hub for the financing and insurance of Chinese commercial space ventures. Hong Kong group SpaceHK is working with mainland companies to develop space insurance solutions, co-founder Mahesh Harilela told the South China Morning Post last month. Chinese Vice-Premier Ding Xuexiang has called on the country’s scientists to fully implement its policies on science and technology to achieve greater self-reliance, Xinhua reported. Ding stressed the importance of basic research and education and called for breakthroughs in core technologies, with a focus on aligning innovation with the needs of industry. How others reported it Big deal?: Sam Bresnick, a research fellow who studies China at Georgetown’s Centre for Security and Emerging Technology, said it would be a “big deal” if China’s space programme can regularly recover and reuse parts of its rockets. “It pretty radically decreases the cost of building out these giant satellite constellations that China has made very clear that it wants to build out,” Bresnick said. (The Wall Street Journal) Safe lead: [Todd Harrison, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute,] remains optimistic that the United States, with the entrepreneurial risk-taking of companies like SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ space company, Blue Origin, will continue to outpace what the Chinese government and Chinese companies will be able to accomplish. “They don’t have the same kind of market dynamics,” Mr Harrison said. “They don’t have the same access to capital in the private sector. There are major impediments to China getting market share.” (The New York Times) New battleground: Against the backdrop of the US-China tech rivalry, low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellite launches have emerged as another critical battleground alongside artificial intelligence … The successful reusable launch mission of the Long March-10B is expected to drive a significant drop in China’s satellite launch costs, thereby accelerating satellite constellation deployment. Looking ahead, China’s annual satellite launch volume could scale up by tens or even hundreds of times. The resulting surge in capital expenditure will create substantial investment opportunities. (Citic Research) Soft-power play: Victoria Samson, the chief director for Space Security and Stability at the Secure World Foundation, called the demonstration a “huge game changer. … When China figures out how to reuse them, that is going to drop the launch cost for them tremendously and then they could use it as part of their soft-power outreach to launch things for potential allies very cheaply.” China wouldn’t compete directly with Musk’s company for launch customers due to national security rules that effectively split the global market for rockets between the US and Europe on one hand, and Russia and China on the other. (TechCrunch) Big bottleneck: Blaine Curcio, founder of Orbital Gateway Consulting, said that developing reusable rockets would help to unjam “a pretty big bottleneck” for China’s efforts to create satellite clusters to rival those of SpaceX’s Starlink. “We’ve seen over the last few years a lot of money going into these projects, a lot of top-level government support, but the deployment rate has been … still relatively unimpressive.” (Financial Times) The SCMP Plus takeawayChina has broken the US monopoly on reusable orbital rocketry. It still has years to go, though, before becoming a major challenger to Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which first accomplished the capture of an orbital rocket, its Falcon 9, in 2015.The success on Friday of the Long March-10B mission was clearly a breakthrough for the nation, and for a new capture method that effectively catches a 12-storey missile aboard a vessel at sea using guide wires and netting after a controlled descent.A booster engine failing to start or stop at the right time could spell disaster for a tricky re-entry process that has earned the nickname “Gates of Hell” according to the head engineer of China-aerospace-science-and-technology-corporation" class="entity-link entity-organization" data-entity-id="151125" data-entity-type="organization">China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation, which carried out the successful launch. The Long March booster descends into a wide square frame before the netting is deployed, allowing for a greater margin for error.By contrast, SpaceX’s Starship is recovered using a launch tower that catches the rocket by its load-bearing pins using giant “chopsticks”, requiring greater precision.Meanwhile, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 deploys hydraulic legs to land on a ground pad or drone ship. Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin uses hydraulic legs to catch its rockets aboard a sea recovery vessel named Jacklyn.In November, Blue Origin successfully tested a New Glenn reusable rocket – named “Never Tell Me the Odds” in a nod to Star Wars – for the first time. The company’s programme suffered a setback in May when a New Glenn rocket exploded on a Florida launch pad.SpaceX has more than a decade’s head start on all its rivals, having successfully carried out more than 600 orbital missions using reusable rockets. Last year, it launched 165 Falcons, more than the rest of the world’s rocket launches combined, Space Daily reported.It has become a well-oiled machine. Twice in the past week, for example, it launched reusable rockets carrying Starlink satellite payloads into orbit in missions that sandwiched the Chinese success. On Thursday, it sent up its most used Falcon 9 vehicle, B1067, for a record 36th time, according to Space.com. On Saturday, B1071 went on its 35th mission.Having reusable rockets considerably reduces the cost, and allows a boost to the frequency, of launches to deploy satellite constellations and other payloads and send up missions to explore deep space or land astronauts on the moon. Until Friday, China’s successful space launches had exclusively employed expendable, single-use rockets.Reusable Long March-10B rockets that don’t require heavy hydraulic legs for the capture process could potentially carry bigger payloads.Even for reusable rockets, the funding requirements are considerable. Here, SpaceX has built a substantial lead as well, having launched the biggest initial public offering in history in June. The US$75 billion listing made Musk a trillionaire and dwarfed previous record holder Saudi Aramco’s US$29.4 billion IPO in 2019.So far, three Chinese space and satellite companies have submitted listing applications to the Shanghai Stock Exchange. None of them has yet carried out a successful orbital rocket capture.LandSpace Technology is seeking a 7.5 billion yuan (US$1 billion) listing, while CAS Space and Beijing Minospace Technology are seeking to raise less from share sales. LandSpace conducted a failed test of a reusable orbital-class rocket in December, while CAS Space tested its suborbital Lihong 1 rocket in January. Beijing Minospace makes small- and micro-sized commercial satellites.GalaxySpace, a Beijing-based LEO satellite maker that is planning to list in Shanghai, is also eyeing Hong Kong and Macau as springboards for building its international business.Orbital launch capabilities fit into China’s broader space programme, which includes plans for low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellite constellations as a Chinese rival to Starlink. Such networks have taken on geopolitical significance as military conflicts, from Russia’s war on Ukraine to the US interventions in Venezuela and Iran, have highlighted the importance of maintaining critical communications infrastructure during crises.Outer space, cyberspace, artificial intelligence and nuclear energy were made priorities by China’s leaders in the latest five-year plan, approved by parliament in March. This signals there will be a strong focus on space for years to come as Chinese makers of reusable rockets start to chip away at SpaceX’s considerable lead in the commercial space-launch market.