On 10 July, the Long March 10B carrier rocket lifted off from Hainan Commercial Space Launch Site, successfully delivering satellites into scheduled orbit and recovering its first-stage booster — marking China’s maiden controlled recovery of a rocket first stage and the world’s first successful sea-based net recovery of a launch vehicle. Key technologies developed by Harbin Engineering University underpinned the mission’s complete success, including unmanned remote dynamic positioning for marine vessels, vibration-noise testing analysis and motion measurement systems for recovery platforms.

Professor XIA Guihua’s research team developed the vessel dynamic positioning system, integrated with domestically manufactured high-precision measuring equipment: the differential Beidou positioning system by Professor ZHAO Lin’s team, and fibre-optic gyroscopes & motion reference units by Professor ZHAO Yuxin’s team. The technology breakthroughs include high-precision station-keeping, multi-system redundant voting and intelligent remote control, enabling the recovery vessel Navigator to safely catch the Long March 10B booster and realise the historic global first sea net-controlled recovery. Lecturer SHAO Xingchao led the on-site support team stationed aboard the command vessel.

HEU has long built disciplinary strengths in cross-domain sea-air integration, sea-based space launch and cold-region low-altitude technology. Its proprietary technologies have supported launches of the Long March 11 carrier rocket, and the university built China’s first marine space launch command and measurement vessel. Moving forward, HEU will deepen its sea-air cross-disciplinary development, prioritise fundamental research and core technology breakthroughs, cultivate top industry talent, and contribute HEU expertise to national aerospace development.