There are sound engineering reasons to use the same approach SpaceX uses with the Falcon 9.
The first Long March 12B rocket climbs into the sky Monday over the Jiuquan launch base in northwestern China. Credit: VCG/VCG via Getty Images
The first Long March 12B rocket climbs into the sky Monday over the Jiuquan launch base in northwestern China. Credit: VCG/VCG via Getty Images
The race to field China’s first reusable launch vehicle is far less predictable than a similar competition that played out in the United States a decade ago.
There was never any real question of which company would develop and demonstrate the first reusable orbital-class rocket in the United States. SpaceX landed a Falcon 9 booster for the first time in 2015, and a little more than a year later, it launched it back into space. It took nearly 10 years for anyone else to do the same. Blue Origin celebrated its first orbital-class booster landing last November with the successful recovery of one of its New Glenn boosters, followed by a relaunch of the same rocket in April.
In China, several companies and state-owned enterprises have a realistic shot at landing an orbital-class booster stage this year. For a time, it seemed like China’s new crop of privately funded launch companies might have the advantage in accomplishing the first landing of an orbital-class booster. But Monday’s launch of China’s Long March 12B rocket, backed by the nearly unrestricted resources of the country’s vast state-owned aerospace enterprise, suggests the industry’s legacy players may now have a leg up.
Secrecy reigns
China’s first two attempts to recover heavy boosters failed in December. First, a company named LandSpace, part of China’s recent wave of quasi-commercial launch providers, debuted its Zhuque 3 rocket on December 2. The launch was successful, but the booster crashed near its landing zone downrange from its launch site in the Gobi Desert of northwestern China. Less than three weeks later, a somewhat less powerful rocket named the Long March 12A had a similar result on its first test flight. The Long March 12A is a product of the Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology, part of China’s legacy government-owned space industry.
In early April, another relative newcomer to China’s launch sector launched its new medium-class Tianlong 3 rocket. The 7-year-old firm behind the Tianlong 3, named Space Pioneer, said the rocket failed to reach orbit, an outcome not uncommon for brand-new launch vehicles. Tianlong 3’s first stage booster is designed for recovery and reuse, but a landing attempt will have to wait until a future flight.
The Long March 12B, the largest and most powerful (potentially) reusable rocket China has launched to date, lifted off Monday from a remote launch pad in the Gobi Desert. The 236-foot-tall (72-meter) rocket took off at 4:40 pm Beijing time (08:40 UTC or 4:40 am EDT).
Unusually, Chinese officials appear not to have announced the launch in advance. The Chinese government did not issue any public notices for pilots to avoid the rocket’s flight path, as is customary for space launches around the world. It’s too soon to know if this was a one-off change or the start of a new policy for Chinese launches. Russia’s government, which has historically also released safety notices for its space launches, has begun issuing such warnings to cover extended periods over many days in a bid to conceal when a launch might actually occur.
The existence of the Long March 12B was not a secret. The rocket completed a test firing on its launch pad in China in January, and a launch was expected in the first half of this year. It was developed by China Commercial Rocket Co. Ltd., or CACL, an opaque business venture set up by China’s sprawling state-owned aerospace enterprise. According to Chinese state media reports, engineers designed and developed the Long March 12B in just 21 months. If the claim is true, it would be a remarkably fast timeline to progress from a clean sheet to an orbital flight.
Monday’s launch did not include any attempt to land the first stage booster, but the rocket carried grid fins and landing legs, important hardware elements for future recovery experiments. A statement released by China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC), CACL’s parent company, declared the first flight of the Long March 12B a “complete success” in a post-launch statement.
“This launch adds another high-capacity commercial rocket to [China’s] fleet for large-scale Internet constellation networking missions,” CASC said. “No recovery tests were conducted during this mission; however, first-stage recovery tests are scheduled to be carried out at a later, opportune time.”
Satellites for one of these large-scale Internet constellations rode to space aboard the Long March 12B, which released a batch of Qianfan broadband spacecraft into low-Earth orbit. Qianfan is one of China’s two leading mega-constellations, each seeking to replicate for China what SpaceX’s Starlink does in the United States.
Who’s involved?
The Long March rocket family dates back to 1970, when China launched its first satellite into orbit using the Long March 1 vehicle derived from Chinese ballistic missiles. Many iterations have followed. The Long March 2, 3, and 4 rockets were China’s workhorses in the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s. These rockets remain operational but are being replaced by newer models, such as the Long March 5, 6, 7, and 8, which can launch everything from small satellites to massive modules for China’s space station.
Somewhat confusingly, the Long March 12 family now includes three dissimilar designs. The original Long March 12, with four kerosene-fueled main engines, launched for the first time in 2024, sporting a conventional, expendable design. The partially reusable Long March 12A launched in December, replacing the Long March 12’s kerosene-fueled engines with a methane-fueled propulsion system outsourced to a private engine builder. The Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology (SAST) managed the development of the Long March 12 and 12A.
China’s Long March 12A rocket, using methane-fueled engines, launched for the first time in December.
Credit: VCG/VCG via Getty Images
China’s Long March 12A rocket, using methane-fueled engines, launched for the first time in December. Credit: VCG/VCG via Getty Images
The Long March 12A rocket reached orbit, but its lift capacity is half that of the Long March 12 after accounting for the fuel reserve required to recover the booster stage. The Long March 12B reverts back to the kerosene and liquid oxygen mix used on the Long March 12, but with nine engines on the first stage instead of four. The Long March 12B is also taller and wider than the 12 or 12A. Collectively, these changes allow the Long March 12B to approach the payload capacity of the Long March 12, even when it flies in reusable mode.
These rocket developments were directly orchestrated by the Chinese government, which owns institutions like CASC, SAST, CACL, and the granddaddy of all Chinese rocket developers: the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology. CALT is in the advanced stages of readying a new partially reusable rocket, the Long March 10, to send astronauts to the Moon. Further behind is the Long March 9, a super-heavy-lift launch vehicle sized as a Chinese analog to SpaceX’s Starship. A suborbital version of the Long March 10 made a controlled, on-target splashdown following a test flight in February.
A tip of the hat
Many of China’s up-and-coming rockets bear a striking resemblance to those developed halfway around the world by SpaceX. As Ars has previously reported, the Long March 9 is supposed to be China’s answer to Starship. But other Chinese rocket programs are still trying to catch the same lightning SpaceX caught with the Falcon 9.
The Long March 12B that launched Monday uses nine kerosene-fueled main engines and a single engine on the second stage, the same as the Falcon 9. The engines generate 1.7 million pounds of thrust at liftoff, the same as the Falcon 9. In expendable mode, the Falcon 9 rocket can deliver nearly 23 metric tons (about 50,000 pounds) of payload to low-Earth orbit. The Long March 12B’s payload capacity to low-Earth orbit maxes out at about 20 metric tons (44,000 pounds) on an expendable mission.
Space Pioneer’s Tianlong 3, which failed on its first flight in April, uses the same kerosene-fueled, nine-engine cluster arrangement on the booster, coupled with a single-engine second stage. Its lift capability is a little less than that of the Falcon 9 or Long March 12B, but it is similar in height and thrust.
The Long March 12A and Zhuque 3 are powered by groupings of seven and nine methane-fueled engines, respectively, on their booster stages.
There are sound engineering reasons to use the same approach SpaceX uses with the Falcon 9. A clustered engine configuration on the first stage, usually with seven or nine engines, offers several advantages. It allows a booster stage to provide high thrust during ascent, and a lower power level during propulsive landing burns. In some cases, flying with a cluster of booster engines might allow the rocket to continue its mission even if one of them fails.
There are important, less obvious aspects of a rocket’s design. We have less insight into how closely those elements on China’s rockets match what SpaceX has tried and proven on Falcon 9.
But SpaceX’s architecture clearly works. The first version of Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket uses seven engines fueled by methane, and the company is looking at going to nine booster engines in the future. Several more US rocket companies are pursuing similar designs for their reusable rockets. Nearly all are going with seven- or nine-engine boosters.
Stephen Clark is a space reporter at Ars Technica, covering private space companies and the world’s space agencies. Stephen writes about the nexus of technology, science, policy, and business on and off the planet.
