China Completes Mengzhou Abort Test, Splashes Down Booster

On Wednesday, February 11th, the China Manned Space Agency conducted an in-flight abort test of their Mengzhou crewed lunar spacecraft, launched atop a Long March 10A test booster. Lifting off from the Wenchang Space Launch Site in Hainan, the mission appeared a complete success, a key milestone for China’s lunar exploration ambitions.

After a brief ascent, Mengzhou successfully fired its launch abort system to separate from the booster during max-Q, when aerodynamic forces are at their most intense. The capsule then parachuted to a safe splashdown in the South China Sea. Meanwhile, the booster conducted a propulsive soft landing in the ocean near its recovery ship, paving the way for reusable launches of the Long March 10A system in the future.

Mengzhou is a core component of the Chinese Lunar Exploration Program, as the spacecraft which will deliver Taikonauts to the Moon and return them safely to Earth. For these missions, the super-heavy-lift Long March 10 rocket will launch Mengzhou to lunar orbit. There, it will meet the Lanyue lunar lander, delivered by a second Long March 10, and the crew will transfer to Lanyue to descend to the surface. At the end of the mission, the Taikonauts will return to Mengzhou, which will carry them home.

The in-flight abort test of Mengzhou is a key milestone before the spacecraft can carry crew, and is similar to the Ascent Abort-2 test of NASA’s Orion spacecraft in July of 2019. China aims to land its first crew on the Moon by 2030, a goal which has put pressure on the American-led Artemis Program, whose plans are in flux in part due to delays to its Moon landers. SpaceX’s Starship lander is currently planned to conduct the first crewed Artemis landing by 2028, after an uncrewed demonstration landing in 2027.

The in-flight abort test also demonstrated reusable landing technologies for the Long March 10A launch vehicle. Whereas the lunar Long March 10 is a triple-core rocket, the smaller Long March 10A uses a shorter, single-core variant of the first stage booster, and is planned to be reusable. Long March 10A will launch Mengzhou and other payloads into low Earth orbit to support China’s Tiangong Space Station. Together, Mengzhou and Long March 10A will replace the Shenzhou spacecraft and Long March 2F rocket which began China’s crewed spaceflight program in 2003.

Unlike other reusable launch vehicles, Long March 10A carries no landing legs and will be “caught” by external infrastructure, similar to SpaceX’s Super Heavy booster. However, instead of arms on the launch tower, Long March 10A will be caught by a cradle of moving wires, hanging by a set of hooks. For Wednesday’s launch, the booster deployed its hooks and targeted a water landing within a few hundred feet of the Linghanzhe recovery ship.

The successful soft landing comes after two other Chinese launch vehicles attempted propulsive landings in 2025. Zhuque-3, built by the commercial company LandSpace, made its first flight on December 3rd, and successfully placed a payload into orbit; however, its first stage suffered a failure during its landing burn, impacting the landing pad at high speed.

Then, on December 23rd, the Long March 12A rocket also made a successful orbital launch, but similarly failed to recover the first stage booster. Although neither vehicle landed successfully, three reusable orbital launch vehicles have now launched from China in as many months, with Long March 10A being the first to make a soft landing. Alongside new American rockets like Blue Origin’s New Glenn, a new wave of reusable launch vehicles are finally coming to fruition, establishing them as necessary capabilities for the future of spaceflight.

Edited by Emily B., Scarlet Dominik, and Alejandro Turnbull