China has secured its first controlled recovery of an orbital rocket booster. On 10 July 2026, the Chang Zheng-10B delivered a satellite to orbit and its first stage was caught by a net system on a sea platform, moving the country closer to reusable launch operations.
Chinese satellite factories are now running far ahead of the country’s ability to put payloads into orbit. The Geespace plant in Taizhou can produce up to 500 satellites per year, while semi-automated assembly and test lines have been built in Wuhan, Nantong and Zhuzhou. A factory in Wuxi, which began production in 2026, is designed to make more than 150 satellites annually.
That growing output creates pressure to launch much faster. Without regular and inexpensive access to space, China cannot quickly expand, upgrade or rebuild its planned megaconstellations after failures or losses. The International Telecommunication Union also requires gradual deployment of registered constellations, and missing milestones could lead to reductions in allotted frequency ranges for systems such as Guowang and Qianfan.
Reusable boosters move from tests to a real recovery
China has been attacking the bottleneck with multiple vehicles rather than relying on a single program. The Hyperbola-2Y demonstrator from iSpace completed two vertical take-off and landing flights at the end of 2023, but those flights did not recreate the speed, thermal load or complexity of returning from orbit. In December 2025, LandSpace’s Zhuque-3 and the state-developed Chang Zheng-12A both reached orbit on their first missions without recovering their first stages.
The breakthrough came on 10 July 2026. Chang Zheng-10B, built by the CALT research institute, is a commercial version of the Chang Zheng-10 family and is designed mainly for constellation deployment and large commercial payloads. It uses the first-stage design of the Chang Zheng-10A, a two-stage rocket with a diameter of five metres, a height of up to 67 metres and seven engines on its recoverable booster. The 10A is also intended to support Mengzhou crewed spacecraft and Tianzhou cargo ships on missions to the Tiangong station, while the broader Long March 10 family serves the lunar program with the Lanyue lander.
Before the successful recovery, the project had already checked key systems. Two full-scale ground tests were conducted in August and September 2025; the second, a 320-second run, verified reduced thrust, engine reignition and the recovery sequence. In February 2026, a Chang Zheng-10 stage reached around 105 kilometres in altitude, tested the Mengzhou escape system, then splashed down under control and was recovered from the sea. That flight did not mimic an orbital return, but it validated much of the ascent, re-entry and recovery profile.
The fleet grows, but SpaceX still dominates
China is also increasing launch capacity with expendable and transitional systems. Chang Zheng-8 and 8A have become important vehicles for Chinese internet constellations: Chang Zheng-8 has orbited 18 Qianfan satellites per mission, while the 8A has served further Qianfan groups and batches of the state-backed Guowang network. Chang Zheng-12B debuted on 1 June 2026 with another Qianfan payload; it is designed for future reuse and can lift about 20 tonnes to low Earth orbit, though no recovery was attempted on its first flight.
CAS Space’s Kinetica-2 joined the fleet after its 30 March 2026 debut, carrying around 12 tonnes to LEO or eight tonnes to Sun-synchronous orbit. The lower payload for SSO comes from the need to reach an inclination of roughly 98 degrees. Ground infrastructure is expanding too: the commercial spaceport on Hainan carried out nine launches in 2025, and its second phase includes pads 3 and 4 for liquid-propellant rockets.
The comparison with SpaceX still shows a wide gap. In 2025, China conducted 92 launch missions, while SpaceX flew 165 Falcon 9 missions, more than 120 of them dedicated to Starlink. According to estimates by BryceTech, SpaceX placed about 2,230 tonnes of spacecraft and cargo into orbit, compared with about 290 tonnes from all Chinese launch operators combined, an almost eightfold advantage.
SpaceX benefits from an integrated model that combines serial production of rockets and satellites, high launch cadence, booster recovery and rapid turnaround. Every mission adds data on wear, inspections and reliability. China’s distributed approach reduces dependence on one design and increases the chance that effective solutions emerge, but it can also mean duplicated work and competition for engineers, engines, capital and launch pads. Strong demand from the state-run Guowang program and the publicly supported Qianfan network is meant to keep the system busy.
The Chang Zheng-10B success is an important milestone, yet routine reuse remains the real test. China still has to prove that recovered boosters can be processed quickly and cheaply, and it must increase production of upper stages as well as spaceport throughput. Advances by Chinese firms could in the medium term make the global launch market more competitive and push prices lower. High launch cadence also makes it easier to replace older satellites with new generations of sensors and communication equipment, shortening the time between technology development and operational use. In the broader US-China rivalry, cadence matters: megaconstellations spread capability across many satellites, but they remain resilient only if lost or outdated spacecraft can be replaced quickly. China has made substantial progress, but the United States, led by SpaceX, still has a clear operational edge.
Źródło: WNP.PL, Fot. EPA/MICHAEL GONZALEZ / PAP
