On July 10, China achieved a huge milestone as a space power by successfully recovering the first stage of the Long March 10B rocket on its very first flight. This makes it only the second nation and only the third entity to do so with an orbit-worthy rocket, behind America’s SpaceX and Blue Origin. This is a huge leap forward for China’s ambitions for both orbit and the Moon, as this capability enables more frequent, cheaper launches. While America may lead the space race in both total annual launches and Moon missions, the Middle Kingdom just narrowed the gap considerably.
The Long March 10B accomplishes recovery in a novel way, which you might have thought of yourself when you were 8 years old: It’s caught by a giant net. That net is a massive construction built atop a ship; it is under tension and uses hydraulic damping, per SpaceNews. The first-stage booster itself has hooks to grab the net. As you can see from the video of the capture, it flies itself into the net structure and then cuts its engines while still above deck. By contrast, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and and Blue Origin’s New Glenn have landing legs. Eschewing legs saves precious weight. In addition, legs really need to hit their exact landing target, but a net gives the rocket just a bit more leeway, per Reuters. (SpaceX’s Starship prototype also forgoes legs, instead being caught by giant “chopsticks” on recovery towers.)
Rocket recovery propels China’s space ambitions
SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket is the juggernaut of space rocketry, accounting for over half of all rocket launches globally in 2025. It can do that because its first-stage booster (the part that powers the rest of it into orbit) can be recovered on a drone boat, quickly refurbished, and then put back to work. That both increases launch cadence (because SpaceX doesn’t have to wait around to manufacture a brand new booster) and decreases launch cost (for the same reason). That capability has allowed the company to put tens of thousands of Starlink satellites into orbit, something that wasn’t even possible a decade ago.
China has its own designs for megaconstellations, involving up to 200,000 orbiters. But so far, the nation has only managed 400, according to the New York Times. The nation’s reach has so far exceeded its grasp by quite a bit. If it can now reuse its boosters like SpaceX (planned by end of this year), its reach is going to extend a whole lot farther.
And by “farther,” I mean the Moon. This rocket, the Long March 10B, is the medium-lift cargo variant of the still-in-development Long March 10, which is slated to take Chinese taikonauts to the lunar surface by 2030. Successful recovery marks an important milestone for the rocket family, which means a Moon landing just got a lot more likely to happen on-schedule. NASA’s plan is still to attempt a landing in 2028 as part of the Artemis IV mission, but that depends on one or both potential landers acing their tests on Artemis III. This generation’s space race is very close, and tightening.
