China retrieves Long March 10 booster from South China Sea after test flight

by Riko Seibo
Tokyo, Japan (SPX) Feb 20, 2026
China has carried out its first maritime recovery of a rocket first-stage booster, retrieving the main stage of a Long March 10 heavy-lift carrier rocket from the South China Sea following a key test flight earlier this week.

The China Manned Space Agency reported that the booster was recovered on Friday morning from a designated splashdown zone, marking the first time China has recovered major rocket components from the ocean. A crane lifted the stage from the water and placed it on a recovery vessel for transport and subsequent analysis.

Officials have not yet disclosed how engineers plan to process or reuse the recovered hardware, nor have they released detailed information about the recovery sequence and post-flight inspection campaign. The operation nonetheless represents a major step in China's effort to introduce reusable launch systems into its human spaceflight program.

The maritime recovery followed a critical flight test on Wednesday involving the Long March 10 first-stage booster integrated with the Mengzhou crewed spacecraft, the combination intended for China's planned crewed lunar missions around 2030. During the test, the booster conducted a controlled return using its engines and grid fins before performing a gentle splashdown in the preselected area in the South China Sea.

According to the agency, the flight marked the first successful attempt by a Chinese rocket stage to return safely to Earth for possible reuse, an achievement that aligns China's human spaceflight ambitions more closely with launch-reuse practices already demonstrated by the United States. At present, the United States is the only nation operating reusable orbital-class rockets.

Both the Long March 10 rocket and the Mengzhou spacecraft are in the final stages of research and development at China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp, the country's main state-owned space contractor. Engineers view these systems as core elements in China's roadmap to land astronauts on the moon before the end of the decade.

The Long March 10 is a new-generation launch vehicle designed by the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology. The standard lunar-mission configuration consists of a central core booster flanked by multiple side boosters. Standing 92.5 meters tall and measuring 5 meters in diameter, the rocket has a liftoff mass of 2,189 metric tons and a liftoff thrust of 2,678 tons.

In this configuration, the Long March 10 can send at least 27 tons of payload onto an Earth-moon transfer trajectory, a performance level required for crewed lunar missions and associated cargo flights. Designers note that this capability will support not only initial lunar landing attempts but also the buildup of larger mission architectures.

A shorter variant of the Long March 10 without side boosters is also under development. This version will be 67 meters tall with a liftoff mass of about 740 tons and will be capable of carrying 14 tons to low Earth orbit. Plans call for this configuration to support crew and cargo transportation to the Tiangong space station once it enters operational service.

Engineers state that the first two stages of the core booster are essentially common to both the lunar and the shorter space-station variants, simplifying development and production. In both cases, the first-stage booster is intended to be reusable, enabling it to perform controlled returns after launch.

For lunar missions, the Long March 10 will employ an additional third stage on top of the reusable first and expendable second stage to inject payloads into the Earth-moon transfer trajectory. The shorter configuration for Tiangong resupply flights will omit this third stage, optimizing the vehicle strictly for low Earth orbit operations.