China’s First Recovered Orbital Booster Returns to Port as CASC Eyes 2026 Reflight and LandSpace Prepares First Land Landing
Featured image: The recovered Long March 10B first stage on the Linghangzhe recovery platform, secured by the cable-net capture system; credit: Xinhua/CASC
China’s first recovered orbital-class booster has returned to port aboard the recovery ship Linghangzhe, days after the Long March 10B rocket achieved a world-first net-based booster capture at sea on July 10. The milestone, which makes China the second nation after the United States to recover an orbital rocket stage, has set the stage for an ambitious reflight before the end of 2026 and for a completely different recovery approach from private Chinese company LandSpace, which aims to attempt China’s first land-based propulsive landing in August.
How the Catch Worked
Rather than using landing legs in the SpaceX style, the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology (CALT) equipped the Long March 10B’s first stage with four specialized landing hooks designed to grab tensioned steel cables stretched across a cubic raised frame on the Linghangzhe droneship, positioned about 430 kilometers downrange in the South China Sea.
The landing sequence involved a three-engine entry burn, grid fin steering, a single-engine hover descent, and hook engagement with the cable net. Hydraulic damping absorbed the kinetic energy, and auxiliary cables locked the booster in place for transport.
CALT engineer Chen Muye explained the advantages: eliminating landing leg mass allows higher payload capacity, simplifies onboard structure, and provides wider capture tolerance across tens of meters in two directions. It is the first time any nation or company has recovered an orbital booster using a net-based system.
What Comes Next
CASC intends to re-fly this same first stage before the end of 2026, setting a timeline comparable to early Falcon 9 reuse. The Long March 10B is a partially reusable, two-stage medium-lift rocket with an expendable payload of about 16 metric tons to low Earth orbit. As 1ban.news covered in our earlier report on the July 10 recovery, the rocket is the cargo variant of the Long March 10 family, which includes the human-rated CZ-10A for the Mengzhou crew capsule and the triple-core super-heavy CZ-10 (70 metric tons to LEO) destined for China’s crewed lunar landing by 2030.
Reusability data from the CZ-10B directly feeds the lunar program, and the rocket’s payload capacity makes it ideal for deploying China’s mega-constellations.
LandSpace Pursues a Different Path
While CALT celebrates its sea-based net success, private Chinese launch company LandSpace is preparing for something China has never attempted: a propulsive booster landing on solid ground.
LandSpace’s ZhuQue-3 (ZQ-3), a stainless steel methane-liquid oxygen rocket, completed a full-stack static fire test on June 29, 2026. Its second flight (Y2) is now targeting launch as soon as late August 2026 from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center. The first stage will attempt a powered landing at a downrange landing pad in Minqin County, Gansu Province, about 300 to 390 kilometers from the launch site.
LandSpace’s first orbital flight, the ZQ-3 Y1 in December 2025, successfully reached orbit but failed during the landing burn due to anomalous combustion, with the booster impacting about 40 meters off-center. The Y2 mission aims to close that gap.
Unlike the CZ-10B’s novel hook-and-cable approach, the ZhuQue-3 uses traditional landing legs and grid fins in the Falcon 9 style. If successful, LandSpace would achieve China’s first propulsive vertical landing, and the company plans to re-fly the recovered stage in the fourth quarter of 2026.
Two Architectures, One Goal
China is now pursuing two distinct reusability architectures in parallel: CASC’s cable-net capture and LandSpace’s vertical landing. Both approaches aim at the same goal: dramatically reducing launch costs and competing with SpaceX in the global launch market, but they represent fundamentally different engineering philosophies.
The dual-track strategy reflects Beijing’s push to accelerate commercial space development. The Chinese government has eased IPO rules for reusable rocket companies, and multiple private firms including iSpace (Hyperbola-3) and OrienSpace (Gravity-2) are racing to develop their own recoverable vehicles.