China just notched a huge spaceflight milestone.
The nation has recovered a rocket during an orbital launch for the first time ever, pulling off the feat during the Long March 10B's maiden liftoff on Friday (July 10). And that recovery was unique: The rocket's first stage nestled softly into a net-like structure carried by a ship at sea.
"This mission marks my country's first successful controlled recovery of a launch vehicle and the world's first network-based recovery of a launch vehicle," the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) announced via social media shortly after the launch. (Translation by Google.) "It signifies a historic breakthrough for my country in the field of reusable rocket technology and will lay a solid foundation for accelerating the improvement of my country's space access capabilities."
The Long March 10B is a two-stage rocket that stands about 207 feet (63 meters) tall, according to the state-owned CASC, the main contractor for China's space program.
The vehicle's first stage burns kerosene and liquid oxygen (LOX) propellants, whereas the second stage uses LOX and liquid methane. In reusable mode, the Long March 10B can loft about 16 tons of payload to low Earth orbit.
And the rocket flew with a payload on its debut liftoff — a satellite that successfully reached "its predetermined orbit," according to the CASC update. That post did not provide any details about the spacecraft or its orbit. It did give a brief rundown of the first-stage recovery, however.
"Approximately 6 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," CASC officials wrote, noting that launch occurred from the Hainan Commercial Space Launch Site on Friday at 12:15 a.m. EDT (0415 GMT; 12:15 p.m. Beijing time.) "The launch and first-stage recovery missions were a complete success."
China plans to refly the first stage by the end of the year, they added.
Until now, vertical landings of orbital-class rockets had been performed only by SpaceX, which does them on a regular basis. Indeed, Elon Musk's company has landed orbital rockets more than 600 times to date.
Such extensive reuse has allowed SpaceX to fly more cheaply and efficiently than its competitors and dominate the launch market — something that China is working hard to emulate.
The Long March 10B's "reusable configuration significantly reduces launch costs, offering advantages of large payload capacity and high cost-effectiveness," CASC officials wrote in the post-launch update.
Other partially reusable Chinese rockets are in the works as well, including CASC's Long March 12A and the Zhuque-3, a vehicle built and operated by the Beijing-based company Landspace. Both of those rockets debuted this past December, with similar results: They reached orbit as planned, but their first stages didn't stick the landing.
The Chinese companies CAS Space, Galactic Energy and Deep Blue Aerospace are developing reusable vehicles of their own — Kinetica-2, Pallas-1 and Nebula 1, respectively. So, before too long, Chinese rockets could be returning to Earth with a frequency that rivals SpaceX's workhorse Falcon 9.