BEIJING,China: China has performed its first controlled recovery of a rocket booster stage, German Press Agency (dpa) reported.
The matter was reported by China’s state news agency Xinhua today, after the section of the new Long March-10B launch vehicle was caught by a platform at sea.
The feat was described by the government-run outlet as a “significant breakthrough”.
A video released by the agency shows the rocket stage approaching the platform with its engine still running before descending almost vertically into a tall, rectangular catch frame.
Metal hooks then folded out and latched on to special cables in the catch structure.
Named after the gruelling 9,600-kilometre military retreat by the Chinese Red Army during the Chinese Civil War in 1934 to 1935, the Long March rocket had launched from the Hainan Space Centre and placed a satellite into orbit.
The operation made China the second country after the United States (US) to possess reliable technology for reusable rockets, the newspaper noted.
US space company SpaceX, controlled by Elon Musk, first caught a rocket stage in October 2024 during the fifth test flight of the Starship V3 megarocket.
This was the first time anywhere in the world that the first stage of a rocket has been recovered using a cable-based recovery system.
China has also been developing its reusable rocket programme for many years. Alongside the state space programme, several private Chinese companies are working on the technology, which is intended to make it cheaper to launch satellites and other payloads into space. – BERNAMA-dpa
