China lines up methalox Long March 10C as commercial workhorse after first booster recovery
HELSINKI - China confirmed a methalox Long March 10C as its commercial workhorse following its first successful booster recovery, while injecting fresh capital into commercial rocket ventures.
The China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology (CALT), a subsidiary of the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC), pulled off the country's first successful orbital booster recovery July 10, with the first stage from the Long March 10B's debut flight caught using a sea vessel equipped with a net capture system downrange from Wenchang.
It marked a major success for sustained Chinese efforts across a number of programs to develop reusable rockets, just over a decade after SpaceX demonstrated the first such landing with a different technical approach.
Immediately after the Long March 10B triumph, Chinese space sector officials confirmed long-expected plans for a Long March 10C rocket, expanding the range of CALT's 5.0-meter-diameter Long March 10 series. Each rocket will play a specific role in China's commercial launch, human spaceflight and crewed lunar programs.
The Long March 10A, using kerolox first and second stages, uses seven YF-100 series engines on its first stage. It will be used to launch the new Mengzhou crew spacecraft to low Earth orbit (LEO), with the first test flight possibly coming this year. The Long March 10B, according to Yang Yuguang, Chairman of the Space Transportation Committee of the International Astronautical Federation, speaking to China National Radio July 10, will reuse the first stages from Long March 10A flights. The 10B, with its methalox second stage, will be used for commercial missions, while also serving the role of accumulating flight data for the Long March 10A first stage and further improving its reliability.
The Long March 10C will be an all-methalox rocket, with both stages using reusable gas-generator methalox engines, understood to be designated YF-219. A single, vacuum-optimized YF-219 engine debuted on the July 10 Long March 10B flight, powering the rocket's second stage. This second stage will be used for both the Long March 10B and 10C. The debut of the 10B thus acted as a test for both the 10A for human spaceflight and the 10C for commercial launches, while building on the 10A demonstrator and recovery splashdown test in February.
The first stage of the 10C will be larger and more powerful than that of the kerolox first stage of the 10A and B, potentially requiring a larger recovery vessel than the 25,000-ton, 144-meter Linghang Zhe ("navigator") used for the Long March 10B recovery, or even a different approach to recovery. While the 10B can carry 16,000 kilograms to LEO in reusable mode, the 10C is likely to become China's most capable operational rocket to LEO, though official capacity figures have not been released, surpassing the roughly 25,000 kilograms of the Long March 5B. The Long March 10 series draws on the Long March 5 series, with the 5B developed to launch modules for the Tiangong space station, once planned to carry Mengzhou, and also more recently repurposed to deploy batches of satellites for the national Guowang megaconstellation. The Long March 10C is positioned to be a mainstay commercial launcher, according to Yang.
CALT researcher Qian Hang said in the same report that the Long March 10C is under intensive development and will strongly promote the industrialization of China's space transportation industry in the future. The 10A, B and C series, he said, were developed using advanced modular and serial design concepts, with the approach of using "one diameter, two types of engines, and three modules." This modularization will significantly improve the efficiency of future rocket manufacturing, assembly, testing, and launch, Qian added.
Beyond this, CALT is understood to be working with Hainan Commercial Launch (HICAL) regarding third and fourth pads at the commercial spaceport, with both pads expected to be launch-capable by the end of 2026 and able to host Long March 10B and 10C missions. This will help ease a bottleneck in terms of access to launch infrastructure. Further investment in access and recovery infrastructure is also expected.
SAST reusable rocket efforts
Another major CASC subsidiary, the Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology (SAST), has developed the methalox Long March 12A, which launched for the first time in December 2025, reaching orbit, but failing with the booster recovery attempt. Now, the China Commercial Rocket Co. Ltd.-which developed the Long March 12B, a nominally related kerolox rocket which debuted in June without a recovery attempt-has undergone recapitalization and restructuring, increasing its registered capital from 1.396 billion yuan to approximately 4.172 billion yuan ($616 million), with SAST vastly increasing its investment.
China Commercial Rocket is a different entity from China Rocket Co. Ltd., the longer-standing CALT commercial subsidiary behind the solid Jielong series, commercial Long March 8A missions and the Long March 10B/10C line.
The upshot is that China has both CALT and SAST developing and launching different lineages of reusable medium-lift launch vehicles, with launches from both Hainan and Jiuquan, providing flexibility and redundancy as the country seeks to greatly boost the tonnage it can deploy to orbit.
The country also has a number of commercial companies developing reusable launchers, further aiding efforts to make programs such as megaconstellations viable, with the second flight of Landspace's Zhuque-3 expected in August. As part of longer-term reusability efforts, CASC is also working on 7-meter-diameter rockets as an intermediate step towards the super heavy-lift Long March 9.
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