{"id":2145,"date":"2026-07-10T11:35:18","date_gmt":"2026-07-10T11:35:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/americanhomejournals.com\/?p=2145"},"modified":"2026-07-10T11:35:18","modified_gmt":"2026-07-10T11:35:18","slug":"watch-china-land-a-reusable-rocket-for-the-first-time-a-new-challenge-for-elon-musks-spacex","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/americanhomejournals.com\/?p=2145","title":{"rendered":"Watch China land a reusable rocket for the first time, a new challenge for Elon Musk’s SpaceX"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

SpaceX is flying high off the back of a record-breaking IPO, but China looks determined to bring Elon Musk back down to Earth.<\/p>\n

Read more Kalshi is running a lot of \u2018Love Island\u2019 ads on TikTok<\/a><\/p>\n

China successfully landed the booster stage of its Long March-10B reusable rocket on Friday, the first time it has launched and partially returned a reusable orbital rocket safely to Earth.<\/p>\n

It means that China’s Aerospace Science and Technology Corp, which built the rocket, joins Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin as the only organizations to have successfully landed a rocket booster.<\/p>\n

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\u957f\u5f81\u5341\u53f7\u4e59\u8fd0\u8f7d\u706b\u7bad\u6210\u529f\u5b9e\u73b0\u4e00\u5b50\u7ea7\u53ef\u63a7\u56de\u6536\uff0c\u662f\u5168\u7403\u9996\u6b21\u8fd0\u8f7d\u706b\u7bad\u7f51\u7cfb\u56de\u6536BREAKING\uff5cWORLD\u2011FIRST ACHIEVEMENT!\u00a0#China’s Long March 10B carrier #rocket lifted off from the Hainan commercial space launch site at 12:15 pm on Jul. 10. Approximately six minutes after the separation of the\u2026 pic.twitter.com\/J3mZGuD9Lk<\/p>\n

\u2014 Beijing Evening News (@BeijingEvening) July 10, 2026<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

Local media reported that the Long March rocket’s first stage touched down on a barge around six minutes after launch and was captured by a large net \u2014 reportedly the world’s first ever “net-based recovery” of a rocket.<\/p>\n

Landing a first-stage booster, rather than letting it burn up on reentry, is a key milestone in building reusable rockets, which significantly lowers launch costs. SpaceX landed its first booster in 2015 and has since launched and successfully recovered its Falcon 9 rocket hundreds of times.<\/p>\n

In 2024, SpaceX wowed the world by catching the nearly 400-foot-tall superheavy booster \u2014 which is used to propel its next-generation Starship rocket into orbit \u2014 with the chopstick-like arms of its “Mechazilla” launch tower.<\/p>\n

Blue Origin scored its first booster landing last November, with the first stage of its towering New Glenn rocket successfully landing on a platform in the Atlantic Ocean.<\/p>\n

Read more The sunglasses of Sun Valley: See the shades CEOs wore to the \u2018summer camp for billionaires\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n

Bezos’ rocket company has suffered setbacks since then, with New Glenn exploding on the launchpad in May.<\/p>\n

Landing a booster is a significant step toward China’s ambition of catching up with SpaceX, which launches far more material into orbit than any other country or company.<\/p>\n

The Asian superpower is also attempting to build a rival to SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet service, with state-backed company SpaceSail launching around 200 satellites into orbit since 2024.<\/p>\n

That’s well behind Starlink, which has an estimated 10,000 satellites in low-earth orbit. China’s Long March rocket also lags behind SpaceX’s Falcon 9, with a max payload capacity of 16 tons compared to the Falcon’s 25 tons and Starship’s planned 100+ tons.<\/p>\n

In a post on X in October, however, Musk said that China’s reusable rockets were catching up with SpaceX’s workhorse rocket \u2014 even if they were still some way behind the cutting edge.<\/p>\n

“They have added aspects of Starship, such as use of stainless steel and methalox, to a Falcon 9 architecture, which would enable it to beat Falcon 9,” he wrote.<\/p>\n

Read more OpenAI wants to free us from our screens. Who\u2019s going to tell them?<\/a><\/p>\n

“But Starship [is] in another league,” Musk added.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

China’s Long March rocket has now matched Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin in returning a first-stage booster.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2144,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2145","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tech"],"yoast_head":"\nWatch China land a reusable rocket for the first time, a new challenge for Elon Musk's SpaceX - American home journals<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/americanhomejournals.com\/?p=2145\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Watch China land a reusable rocket for the first time, a new challenge for Elon Musk's SpaceX - 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