context: The land happened seven months after the PRC's first recovery attempts failed—LandSpace's Zhuque-3 and the state-built Long March 12A both lost their first stages in December 2025—and it is the state 'national team', not a commercial startup, that got there first. The net-capture route is telling: rather than replicating SpaceX's propulsive landing, China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation chose a method that trades ground-infrastructure complexity for lighter, simpler rockets—an engineering shortcut that lowers the bar on engine throttling, where Chinese firms still lag SpaceX. The gap remains wide (SpaceX has flown boosters twenty-plus times; the PRC has yet to refly one), but with a reuse flight planned within months and at least four more commercial recovery attempts queued for late 2026, the reusability race PRC entered late is now moving fast, underpinning the Qianfan and Guowang constellation build-outs.
CASC (China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation) announced that the Long March 10B, launched from the Hainan commercial spaceport at noon on 10 Jul 2026, achieved the PRC's first controlled recovery of a launch-vehicle first stage—and the world's first net-capture recovery of an orbital rocket. The first stage descended vertically about six minutes after stage separation and was caught by a net system on an offshore platform. A reuse flight of the recovered stage is expected by year-end
- the milestone
- the PRC's first successful controlled first-stage recovery, and the first net-capture recovery of an orbital launch vehicle globally
- Long March 10B becomes the PRC's first reusable launcher to complete recovery
- per CCTV, a reuse flight of the recovered first stage is expected before year-end
- the vehicle
- derived from the Long March 10 series (developed by CASC's China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology for the crewed lunar program), the 10B variant targets satellite-internet constellation deployment and large commercial launches
- 5-metre diameter, two-stage; 16 t to 200 km LEO in recovery mode, 11 t to 900 km/50° orbits for satellite-internet missions
- first stage uses liquid oxygen-kerosene (same as February's Long March 10A), second stage liquid oxygen-methane with low-cost design for commercial missions
- a February low-altitude demonstration by the 10A validated descent manoeuvres, with a recovery ship running a simulated capture 200 m from splashdown
Xu Xuelei 许学雷 CASC technical expert, noted that net capture is more forgiving on landing metrics: ground buffers absorb most kinetic and potential energy, greatly easing requirements on onboard buffering and engine throttling; landing-point error can be handled by scaling up ground equipment
Yu Jichao 于继超 Orienspace's Second Technology R&D Centre head, on the competing recovery routes
- four approaches now in play: sea splashdown, vertical landing (landing legs), tower catch ('chopsticks'), and offshore net capture; vertical landing splits into return-to-launch-site and downrange sea platforms
- landing legs add about 2 t of mass, costing payload, but ground preparation is simpler; downrange sea platforms (used by Orienspace and iSpace) sit under the flight path, saving return propellant
- net capture shifts the difficulty to the ground platform, saving rocket mass; splashdown is simplest but seawater-proofing adds mass and post-recovery cleaning is slow and costly