China Catches a Falling Rocket Booster Out of the Sky

China has successfully caught a rocket booster falling from space, making it only the second country after the United States to bring one back in working order. On July 10, 2026, the Long March 10B rocket launched from China's Wenchang space center and placed a payload into orbit. As the first stage of the rocket fell back to Earth, it was caught by a giant net anchored in the ocean CCTV.

The rocket is built by CALT, a state-owned Chinese space company. This was the first successful attempt at what CALT calls a world's first recovery method — using a net with hooks to snag the booster as it descends under its own engine power, rather than having it land on legs like SpaceX's Falcon 9 rockets do.

Getting to this moment took some practice. In February 2026, CALT tried the same technique but missed. The booster splashed down about 200 meters away from the intended net. Over five months, the team adjusted their guidance systems and how the net was rigged. When they tried again in July, it worked.

CALT says the booster survived the catch completely intact. The company plans to relaunch it before the end of 2026, which would make this the first time a Chinese orbital rocket booster completes the full cycle from recovery to flying again.

Two different paths forward

China is now experimenting with two separate approaches to rocket reuse at the same time. CALT is using the net-and-hook method. A private Beijing company called LandSpace is building rockets with retractable legs — the same system SpaceX uses. LandSpace's latest landing attempt came close but ended in a fireball LandSpace.

Each approach has trade-offs. The net method saves weight because there are no legs to carry into space and back. But it requires a fixed ocean platform and very precise aim to hit a stationary net. Legs are heavier, but they let rockets land almost anywhere — even return to the launch site to refuel and go up again, as SpaceX's Falcon 9 now does routinely.

What makes this arrangement unusual is that China is supporting both a state-run program and a private company working on the same problem in different ways. In the United States, SpaceX is essentially alone in having mastered reusable rockets.

The real test ahead

The broader context here is launch frequency. In 2025, the US launched 193 rockets into orbit. China launched 92. SpaceX accounts for most of the American launches — and it can do so many because the same rockets fly over and over, sometimes a dozen times or more. China cannot match that pace simply by building more throwaway rockets. A reusable Long March 10B, if it can fly repeatedly, is how China could eventually close that gap.

Beijing has said it wants to become a space superpower by 2030. Reusable rockets are at the center of that plan. But catching one booster successfully is only the beginning. SpaceX took years of failures at its Texas test site before landing rockets reliably became routine. CALT has shown it can do the hard part once. Repeating it dozens of times per year, in the messy reality of ongoing operations, is a much larger engineering challenge. Thursday's catch proves the concept works. It does not prove the system can scale.