Rocket Recovery Tower

Cosmoleap’s Recovery Tower is the ground infrastructure counterpart to the Yueqian-1 booster, replacing conventional deployable landing legs with a pair of high-dynamic mechanical ‘chopstick’ arms mounted on a fixed ground structure. This architecture is the first of its kind in China.

By offloading the landing-leg function to the ground tower, the rocket booster sheds significant structural mass, improving payload fraction and reducing aerodynamic complexity. The tower arms absorb landing-impact loads through hydraulic damping, reducing stress on the booster airframe and extending its operational lifespan across up to 15 reuse cycles.

The system also mitigates engine-exhaust reflection and thermal damage that can occur when a rocket lands on a flat pad, as the booster is caught above the ground level. Onboard sensor and electronics requirements for landing are also reduced, simplifying the avionics suite and cutting vehicle cost.

The core technology pillars are: the tower structure and arm mechanical design; high-dynamic hydraulic actuators capable of rapid, precise motion; automated motion-control software; and high-precision identification and positioning systems that track the descending booster in real time. A successful tower lift test was completed in November 2024.