China successfully tests sea-based rocket booster recovery system
The test marks China’s first successful orbital-class booster recovery and moves its reusable rocket program closer to lower launch costs, officials said.
- On Friday, China successfully tested an experimental rocket retrieval system, recovering a Long March 10B booster on a sea platform six minutes after liftoff from Hainan, state broadcaster CCTV reported.
- China has spent nearly a decade developing reusable rocket technologies to lower launch costs for satellite constellations, following failed recovery attempts by Private Chinese firms and state-owned firms last year.
- Unlike SpaceX's Falcon 9, which lands on deployable legs, the Long March uses 'landing hooks' to catch a net on a sea platform, recovering the engine-packed booster viewed as the most valuable rocket component.
- Shares in Chinese aerospace firms China Spacesat and China Satellite Communications jumped following the test, while China plans to reuse the recovered booster for another launch by year's end.
- As part of the Long March 10 family developed for crewed lunar missions before 2030, this successful test provides critical data to validate technologies relevant to the broader Chinese lunar programme.
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Video. China achieves first-ever controlled rocket booster recovery
Video. China successfully recaptured the first stage of a rocket after a launch on Friday in a breakthrough for the country's space program, state media said. The first stage of a Long March-10B rocket separated from the second stage after liftoff and returned to a platform in the sea.
For the first time in Chinese rocket development, the first stage of a launch vehicle that was intercepted at a floating platform was successfully recovered.
In the struggle for the supremacy in space, Beijing reports a great success. After the launch, the first stage of a new launcher is specifically secured on a platform in the sea. Thus, China is the second nation after the USA with this technology.
China successfully launched a reusable rocket for the first time, like Musk's China successfully launched the Long March-10B rocket from the Wenchang Cosmodrome. The first stage of the rocket returned to Earth, it was "caught" on a sea platform.
China has successfully tested a reusable rocket that could become a direct competitor to Elon Musk's company Space X.
China successfully recovered, for the first time on Friday, the propellant of an orbital class rocket, marking a major breakthrough in its efforts to develop reusable launch systems, broadcasts the state press in Beijing, quoted by the BBC.
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