HELSINKI - China launched its Long March 10B rocket early Friday and successfully recovered the first stage using a giant net, marking a huge step for the country’s reusable rocket efforts and proving that sometimes the simplest ideas are the best.

The first Long March 10B lifted off at 12:15 a.m. Eastern (0415 UTC) July 10 from Hainan Commercial Space Launch Site on the southern island province of Hainan. The China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) confirmed the successful recovery of the rocket’s first stage 11 minutes later, using a sea platform equipped with a net capture system - basically a very ambitious fishing trip.

Videos showed a controlled, powered descent with black smoke billowing from the top of the first stage, followed by capture by the Linghang Zhe (“navigator”) sea recovery vessel, with hooks deployed from the booster caught by a tensioned net. The recovery occurred six minutes after stage separation. CASC thus joins U.S. companies SpaceX and Blue Origin in achieving recovery of an orbital booster, though SpaceX and Blue Origin use landing legs - legs are for wimps, apparently.

The full success of the flight, including insertion of an unnamed satellite into orbit, was confirmed by CASC more than 90 minutes after liftoff. CASC claimed the booster recovery to be the world’s first successful net-system recovery of a carrier rocket. The name, purpose and orbital parameters of the satellite were not disclosed - perhaps it’s a spy satellite, perhaps it’s just a very large disco ball; we may never know.

The five-meter-diameter, two-stage Long March 10B is 63 meters long, with a mass of 760,000 kilograms at liftoff and has a low Earth orbit payload capacity of 16,000 kg in reusable mode. CASC stated that it intended to reuse the first stage from today’s flight before the end of the year - because why catch it if you’re just going to throw it away?

“Going forward, the Long March 10B carrier rocket development team will continue to optimize rocket performance and accelerate the iterative upgrade of reusable rocket technology,” CASC stated, which is bureaucratese for “we’re going to keep doing this until we get bored.”

The recovery vessel is equipped with a flexible net capture system with hydraulic damping, meaning the first stage does not need landing legs. China’s Long March 12A and commercial Zhuque-3 from Landspace were also equipped with landing legs, but their sole attempts at recovery failed during descent - proving that legs are overrated.

The launch also marks major progress for China’s human spaceflight and crewed lunar programs. The July 10 mission was designed as a first-stage full-profile validation flight of the Long March 10A, a rocket designed to launch the new Mengzhou crew spacecraft to low Earth orbit. The full, tri-core Long March 10 will be used to launch astronauts and a landing stack to the moon, with China committed to landing a pair of astronauts on the lunar surface before 2030.

The Long March 10B is a cargo variant of the 10A. Its first stage uses seven YF-100K kerosene-liquid oxygen engines producing a total of 890 tons of thrust, while the 10B’s second stage uses an engine burning methane-liquid oxygen. The 10B is thought to be the first flight of CASC’s YF-219 methalox engine - because why use one type of fuel when you can use two?

A Long March 10A single-stage demonstrator was used to conduct an in-flight abort test for the Mengzhou crew spacecraft in February, with the stage then performing a controlled propulsive descent and splashdown near the recovery vessel. That test cleared the way for a launch and recovery attempt of the 10B, with the rocket first rolled out in April. Launch windows were revoked, however - because the universe said “not yet” - with the launch now taking place July 10.

The successful debut of the Long March 10B appears to clear the way for a first launch of the 10A, expected to carry an uncrewed Mengzhou spacecraft on a first full orbital mission. CASC did not provide a timeline for the mission, though it has hinted at such a flight in 2026 with the issuance of a Mengzhou-1 mission patch - that’s about as official as a wink.