On July 10, China achieved something that many considered a technical whim almost impossible to replicate outside the United States. The Long March 10B rocket took off from Hainan and, minutes after separating from its upper stage, its first stage descended vertically until it was caught by a giant net stretched over a sea platform. There were no legs touching the ground and no conventional landing. It was a capture in mid-flight, something that until now no one had achieved on this scale with an orbital-class rocket.

This is how the hook and net system works

The first stage of the Long March 10B incorporates four hooks installed in its body, specifically in the interstage area, and these are the key piece of the entire operation. During the return, the booster restarts its engines to stop the fall and adjust the trajectory, seeking to arrive in a vertical position, with minimum speed and within a very tight margin of error.

In the final seconds, the rocket is positioned just above the boat and the hooks snag on the taut cables of the net, a mechanism that CASC engineers directly compare to the arresting cables that planes use when landing on an aircraft carrier.

Xu Xuelei, a specialist at the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation, explained that the kinetic and potential energy of the rocket is almost entirely absorbed by a damping mechanism installed on the platform itself, and not in the body of the booster. This greatly reduces the structural design demands of the rocket, because much of the heavy braking work falls on the side of the maritime infrastructure, not the vehicle returning from space.

The Linghangzhe ship, the piece that makes it possible

None of this would be viable without Linghangzhe, also known as Pathfinder, the first Chinese offshore platform certified for this type of recovery. The ship measures 144 meters in length, is 50 meters wide, has a draft of 5.5 meters and has a displacement of 25,000 tons fully loaded, in addition to having DP2 dynamic positioning to remain stable in the middle of the ocean while waiting for the rocket. Its recovery deck exceeds 40 by 60 meters, a space precisely designed to align the net with the downward trajectory of the thruster.

What is striking is that this network system does not require landing legs mounted on the rocket, a component that in other models adds considerable weight and mechanical complexity. By eliminating that part, the rocket gains room to carry more payload on each mission, and the reconditioning process between flights is greatly simplified. Furthermore, according to the Chinese engineers themselves, the network offers more margin against small deviations in landing, because part of the correction can be adjusted from the ground equipment instead of requiring extreme precision from the rocket.

This same system, adapted to different rocket sizes without the need to redesign the landing gear for each model, is part of what makes the Chinese proposal so flexible compared to other vertical recovery alternatives that exist in the world. With Linghangzhe already certified and in operation, and with this first successful capture confirmed, China consolidates its own reuse method that promises to accelerate the pace of launches and lower costs in the coming years.