A system on the internet wants to compete with the US’s lead in reusable rocket tech.
BY Mahnoor | 11-07-2026
China tested a way to catch a rocket with a net on a sea platform on Friday. State media says they want to beat the US in reusable rockets.
The Long March 10B rocket took off from Hainan at 12:15 pm. About six minutes after it split into two parts, the lower part came back down and was caught on a platform at sea, reported CCTV.
This test is the first time China has successfully brought back a big rocket from space. This helps China make progress toward building rockets that can be used more than once.
The rocket put a satellite into a planned path around Earth on Friday, according to state media. News of this made stock prices of Chinese space companies go up a lot, and China Spacesat and China Satellite Communications hit their highest daily price limits.
The Long March 10B is similar to the Falcon 9, a medium-sized rocket that SpaceX uses a lot. It was made for business space travel by China’s main government rocket maker, the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology (CALT). It can carry at least 16 metric tons to low-Earth orbit.
But it is different from the Falcon 9 because it does not land by itself on legs on a ground pad or drone ship. Instead, it uses four ‘landing hooks’ to catch a net on a sea platform.
“Using a net to catch the rocket makes it simpler, lighter, and able to carry more cargo. It also works well if the rocket lands in a different spot, because the net system can adjust to catch it,” said Chen Muye, an expert from CALT, to the state news agency Xinhua.
SpaceX first landed a Falcon 9 rocket after an orbital flight in December 2015, and Blue Origin’s New Glenn did the same in November 2025.
Now, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 launches about 150 times each year, which is around three times every week. Its booster is reused many times as needed. The booster, which has many engines, is usually seen as the most expensive part of a rocket.
China has spent almost ten years making reusable rocket technologies. This started with early tests of hovering at low heights and now includes trying to recover big boosters from space missions. Having reusable rockets will make launching cheaper for China’s quickly growing groups of commercial satellites.
Private Chinese companies are working harder to test their reusable rockets as the world competes to master this technology. China has made it easier for companies making reusable rockets to get funding through stock market rules.
Two tries by private firm LandSpace and state-owned China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation last year did not succeed in the important final step of landing and recovering the rocket booster.
The Long March 10B rocket is part of the Long March 10 family built for China’s moon missions before 2030. It can test important technologies for the moon program. CCTV says China will reuse the Long March 10B’s main booster for another launch by the end of this year.
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