China Launches and Catches Long March 10B
On Friday, July 10th, Chinarocket Co. launched the Long March 10B rocket for the first time, safely reaching orbit and successfully “catching” the rocket’s first stage booster. This makes China only the second nation ever to propulsively land a reusable orbital rocket, heralding a rapidly changing landscape as the country pursues its goal of landing humans on the Moon.
Long March 10B is a two-stage rocket, with a reusable booster powered by kerosene and oxygen and a second stage burning methane and oxygen. Chinarocket Co. is a commercial branch of the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology (CALT), itself affiliated with the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC), a prime contractor for China’s national space programs.
The demonstration flight lifted off at 12:15 PM local time from Launch Complex 2 at the Wenchang Commercial Space Launch Site in Hainan. Long March 10B completed a successful ascent through both stages, ultimately placing the upper stage into a stable orbit of the Earth. It’s unclear at this time if the rocket carried a functional payload or a mass simulator for its first flight.
After stage separation, the first stage booster navigated to a soft landing in the South China Sea, using grid fins to steer through the atmosphere. Relighting one of its seven YF-100K engines, the booster descended into a large wire cradle structure onboard the Linghanzhe recovery ship. The booster deployed four small hooks and successfully “caught” the ship’s cables, leaving it suspended in midair.
Long March 10B joins a small cohort of orbital rockets to make successful propulsive landings for reuse. For nearly 10 years, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 was the only booster to perform this feat, until the larger Super Heavy booster was first caught by crane arms on its launch tower in 2024. Blue Origin’s New Glenn later achieved two safe landings in 2025 and 2026. Two other Chinese rockets attempted land-based recoveries in December of 2025: LandSpace’s Zhuque-3, and the state-owned Long March 12. Though neither attempt was successful, either of these launch vehicles might soon join the growing list of reusable orbital rockets.
Long March 10B shares a first stage with Long March 10A, which flew a shortened test article in 2026 and performed a successful ocean splashdown near the recovery ship. That mission also tested launch abort capability for the lunar-capable Mengzhou spacecraft, which will first fly to orbit aboard Long March 10A. The successful landing of 10B’s first stage thus comes as a milestone for both launch vehicles. Shortly after the launch, state media declared that Chinarocket plans to refly the recovered booster by the end of the year.
Furthermore, the first stage design of both Long March 10A and 10B is derived from the much larger Long March 10, the triple-core Moon rocket at the heart of China’s human lunar exploration plans. Two launches of Long March 10, carrying Mengzhou and the Lanyue lander, will support crewed lunar landing attempts before the end of the decade.
In the United States, the progress of China’s space program has frequently been used as a political motivator. NASA leadership and government officials have described the two nations as being locked in a new Space Race as the Artemis program aims to land humans on the Moon in a similar timeframe. While NASA has twice flown Orion and SLS to the Moon, including the first humans to visit in more than 50 years, the program’s commercially-procured landers have emerged as a significant hurdle to the goal of a crewed landing.
Though the China Manned Space Agency has yet to match NASA’s milestones at the Moon, the successful flight of Long March 10B, together with the advancement of Mengzhou, reflects a trend of consistent progress towards this goal.
Edited by Emily B.
