During the week of July 6 to July 11, China demonstrated a series of outstanding technological achievements in space exploration, artificial intelligence infrastructure, energy, and high-precision measurements, indicating an accelerated pace of scientific and technological development in the country.
The most notable event occurred on July 10 when the Long March 10B rocket was launched from the Wenchang site. The world witnessed the first-ever recovery of a rocket using a specialized net in the open sea. The CZ-10B first stage, equipped with seven YF-100K engines, separated from the upper stage and descended vertically onto the Navigator tug at a distance of 431 kilometers. There, the tensioned net system successfully caught the 850-ton class booster. This marks China's first operational capability for creating reusable rockets and the first instance any nation has achieved orbital recovery at sea, providing an advantage in payload capacity over traditional designs with landing gear.
On the same day, Sugun completed the creation of the first fully domestic super AI cluster with 100,000 cards, named Dawn 8000 Dengfeng. This cluster is built on a super-AI fusion architecture, combining precision from FP64 to INT8, and is immediately connected to the National Supercomputer Internet. Utilizing Hygon processors, the scaleFabric network infrastructure, and the ParaStor distributed storage, Dawn 8000 has already optimized over 300 applications across more than 20 fields, including protein folding modeling, molecular dynamics of trillions of atoms, and simulation of turbulence in a grid of 100 trillion points.
Regarding space research, the Tianwen-2 probe successfully docked with asteroid 2016 HO3 after a 400-day journey and covering a distance of one billion kilometers. The probe positioned itself 20 kilometers from the asteroid to begin scientific observations. This mission will allow for mapping the morphology and composition of the asteroid as part of preparations for sample collection, thereby advancing China's capabilities in deep space.
In the field of energy infrastructure, the world's largest offshore power conversion complex departed from Yangtze Nantong for the flexible AC transmission project on Sanshan Island. This 25,000-ton offshore energy hub will annually transmit 6 billion kWh of energy from offshore wind power to the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, stimulating the trillion-yuan marine wind energy industrial chain.
Furthermore, a national high-precision roundness calibration facility was established, filling a gap in China's measurement traceability system and ensuring an internationally advanced level of measurement for components in semiconductor manufacturing, optics, and precision spindles.
China has reached a significant milestone by entering the era of reusable rockets through the development of a marine net recovery system. The system, implemented on the Long March 10B rocket, is the first of its kind globally and eliminates the need for landing legs, allowing for increased payload capacity and enhanced reliability.
Instead of following the landing leg design used by SpaceX, the CASC-developed CZ-10B utilizes a net capture mechanism. Industry experts note that this approach offers advantages in terms of reliability and payload capacity. This booster stage completely foregoes heavy landing legs, replacing them with capture mechanisms at the base.
After separation, the booster uses net stabilizers and engines to slow down during atmospheric entry and perform precise maneuvering, descending vertically toward the collection vessel Navigator. This ship is the world's first marine platform for rocket recovery. Navigator measures 144 meters long, 50 meters wide, and has a displacement of 25,000 tons. It is equipped with a DP2 dynamic positioning system, which allows it to maintain position within 0.5 meters even in waves up to 4 meters high.
The net tensioning system on the deck uses mobile wagons with six degrees of freedom compensation for precise alignment with the descending booster. The capture area is a target window measuring 54 by 54 meters. This method requires high precision from both the rocket and the ship. The net capture mechanism absorbs most of the kinetic and potential energy through onboard damping systems, reducing stress on the booster landing structure and solving the landing accuracy problem. The absence of extra weight from landing legs increases payload capacity and allows for more frequent reuse cycles, targeting 10 or more launches with a turnaround time of 72 hours.
Industry analysts point out that while net recovery demands high precision from the rocket and the ship, once mastered, it demonstrates greater reliability compared to landing legs for larger rockets. Currently, there are three global methods for recovering reusable rockets: landing legs (SpaceX Falcon 9, LandSpace Zhuque-3), tower-based 'pole' capture (SpaceX Starship), and the Chinese net recovery method. If LandSpace Zhuque-3 successfully completes its upcoming recovery, China will become the first country to master two different reusable rocket technologies.
The technical significance of this development extends beyond the rocket itself. The design of the CZ-10B first stage and engine standards are used in the crewed lunar variant CZ-10. This version will consist of three such stages, designed to deliver over 70 tons to low Earth orbit as part of China's crewed lunar mission program by 2030. The reusable technology will also serve the needs of large-scale deployment of the Qianfan (over 15,000 satellites) and GW (over 13,000 satellites) satellite constellations, with each rocket carrying about 20 satellites, requiring approximately 1400 launches.
