New Delhi, July 10 -- WENCHANG - China brought home a spent rocket booster from orbit on Wednesday and joined a very short list of countries that have pulled off the trick. The Long March 10B, a new-generation carrier rocket built specifically for reuse, completed its maiden launch from the Wenchang Space Launch Center and had its first-stage booster recovered by a ground team - making China only the second country after the United States to return an orbital-class rocket booster under propulsive control.

The moment was engineered to resemble what SpaceX has been doing since 2015, but the Chinese version arrived on a much tighter clock. SpaceX's Falcon 9 took years of flight-test iteration before it reliably brought its boosters back to ...