Reusable launch vehicle

A reusable launch vehicle has parts that can be recovered and reflown, while carrying payloads from the surface to outer space. Rocket stages are the most common launch vehicle parts aimed for reuse. Smaller parts such as fairings, boosters or rocket engines can also be reused, though reusable spacecraft may be launched on top of an expendable launch vehicle. Because these parts do not need to be made new for each launch, reusable launch vehicles can greatly reduce launch cost.

However, reusing parts adds extra work and cost because these parts must be recovered, inspected, and fixed up before they can be used again. Reusable launch vehicles often need extra avionics and propellant, which makes them heavier. They also need special tools to survive re-entry into Earth's atmosphere, like heat shields, grid fins, and other flight control surfaces. Some reusable vehicles are designed like airplanes and can glide or use lift to land safely. Others use parachutes or retrorockets to slow down, and some need special places to land, such as runways or ocean platforms called autonomous spaceport drone ships.

The idea of reusable launch vehicles has been around since early science fiction stories. The first real reusable launch vehicle, the Space Shuttle, began in the 1970s. But later, when it did not meet all its goals, work on reusable vehicles slowed down. In recent years, private companies have led new developments, creating vehicles like SpaceShipOne, New Shepard, Falcon 9, and Falcon Heavy. Many more reusable vehicles are planned for the future, such as Starship and New Glenn.

Because of reusability, space travel has become more possible and affordable. In 2024, plans were made to improve places like the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station to support more launches and landings of these new reusable vehicles.

Configurations

Fully reusable launch vehicle

Several companies are developing fully reusable launch vehicles as of January 2026. Each of them is working on a two-stage-to-orbit system. SpaceX is testing Starship, which has been in development since 2016 and has made an initial test flight in April 2023 and a total of 11 flights as of October 2025. Blue Origin, with Project Jarvis, began development work by early 2021, but has announced no date for testing and have not discussed the project publicly. Stoke Space is also developing a rocket which is planned to be reusable.

As of January 2026^[update], Starship is the only launch vehicle intended to be fully reusable that has been fully built and tested. The fifth test flight was on October 13, 2024, in which the vehicle completed a suborbital launch and landed both stages for the second time.

Partially reusable launch systems

Partial reusable launch systems, in the form of multiple stage to orbit systems have been so far the only reusable configurations in use. The historic Space Shuttle reused its Solid Rocket Boosters, its RS-25 engines and the Space Shuttle orbiter, but it did not reuse the External Tank. This is an example of a reusable launch system which reuses specific components of rockets. ULA's Vulcan Centaur was originally designed to reuse the first stage engines, while the tank is expended. On 23 February 2024, one of the nine Merlin engines powering a Falcon 9 launched for the 22nd time, making it the most reused liquid fuel engine used in an operational manner. As of 2026, Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy and New Glenn are the only orbital rockets to reuse their boosters, although multiple other systems are in development.

Reusable spacecraft

Main article: Reusable spacecraft

Launch systems can be combined with reusable spaceplanes or capsules. The Space Shuttle orbiter, SpaceShipTwo, Dawn Mk-II Aurora, and the under-development Indian RLV-TD are examples for a reusable space vehicle. Contemporary reusable orbital vehicles include the X-37, Dragon 2, and the upcoming Dream Chaser, Indian RLV-TD and the upcoming European Space Rider (successor to the IXV).

In the 2010s, the space transport cargo capsule from one of the suppliers resupplying the International Space Station was designed for reuse, and after 2017, NASA began to allow the reuse of the SpaceX Dragon cargo spacecraft on these NASA-contracted transport routes. The Boeing Starliner capsules also reduce their fall speed with parachutes and deploy an airbag shortly before touchdown on the ground, in order to retrieve and reuse the vehicle. As of 2021^[update], SpaceX is building and testing the Starship spaceship to be capable of surviving multiple hypersonic reentries through the atmosphere so that they become truly reusable long-duration spaceships.

Entry systems

Main article: Atmospheric entry

See also: Air brake (aeronautics), Aerobraking, Aeroshell, Gravity turn, and Orbital injection

Heat shield

See also: Atmospheric entry § Thermal protection systems

Some rockets can use special shields to protect themselves when they come back through the air. These shields can be like balloons that fill with air or tiles that stay cool. They help the rocket land safely without using too much fuel. This can save money because expensive parts can be used again.

Retrograde thrust

Main articles: Retrorocket and Thrust reversal

Some reusable rockets, like the Falcon 9 and the New Shepard, use special engine burns to slow themselves down when they return to Earth and land.

Landing systems

Reusable rockets can be made with one or more stages that go into space. They can land in different ways.

Some rockets use parachutes and airbags to land. They might splash down in water or land on the ground, sometimes using engines to slow down just before touching down. Examples include the Space Shuttle Solid Rocket Boosters and the SpaceX Dragon capsule.

Other rockets land like airplanes, using wings and landing gear. These don’t usually use fuel to land. Examples include the Space Shuttle orbiter and SpaceShipTwo, a spaceplane for space tourism made by Virgin Galactic.

Some rockets land straight down using engines to slow themselves. Examples include the boosters of Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy, which land using one of their engines. The Falcon 9 rocket was the first to land its first stage vertically on the ground.

Constraints

Reusable rocket parts are heavier than one-time-use parts. This extra weight comes from extra tools, landing gear, and extra fuel needed to bring the rocket back down. The amount of extra weight depends on the rocket and how it returns.

After a rocket lands, it often needs repairs before it can fly again. These repairs can take a long time and cost a lot. Sometimes, a rocket might not be safe for people after repairs, but some rockets have been used again for trips with people. Eventually, a rocket can only be repaired so many times before it needs to be retired, and how many times it can be used again depends on the rocket's design.

Return to launch site

After 1980, two space vehicles could return to their starting point. The US Space Shuttle and the Soviet Buran could bring part of the vehicle back to the launch site by landing like an airplane. However, the main structure and large fuel tank were still thrown away after use.

In the 2000s, SpaceX and Blue Origin developed new ways for rockets to land straight down after a flight. SpaceX successfully landed part of their Falcon 9 rocket in December 2015. Since then, more rockets have landed either close to the launch site or on a special platform at sea. The Falcon Heavy can also reuse its three main parts.

Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket also landed successfully several times. However, New Shepard flies straight up and down, while Falcon 9 must return from much farther away after delivering payloads into space.

Both companies are working on new reusable rockets. Blue Origin is developing the New Glenn, planned for its first flight no earlier than 2024. SpaceX is working on the SpaceX Starship, designed to bring both its main and upper parts back safely. Its fourth launch attempt saw both parts land softly in the Gulf of Mexico and the Indian Ocean.

History

With the development of rocket propulsion in the first half of the twentieth century, space travel became a technical possibility. Early ideas of a single-stage reusable spaceplane proved unrealistic and although even the first practical rocket vehicles (V-2) could reach the fringes of space, reusable technology was too heavy. In addition, many early rockets were developed to deliver weapons, making reuse impossible by design. The problem of mass efficiency was overcome by using multiple expendable stages in a vertical launch multistage rocket. USAF and NACA had been studying orbital reusable spaceplanes since 1958, e.g. Dyna-Soar, but the first reusable stages did not fly until the advent of the US Space Shuttle in 1981.

Perhaps the first reusable launch vehicles were the ones conceptualized and studied by Wernher von Braun from 1948 until 1956. The von Braun ferry rocket underwent two revisions: once in 1952 and again in 1956. They would have landed using parachutes.

The General Dynamics Nexus was proposed in the 1960s as a fully reusable successor to the Saturn V rocket, having the capacity of transporting up to 450–910 t (990,000–2,000,000 lb) to orbit. See also Sea Dragon, and Douglas SASSTO.

The BAC Mustard was studied starting in 1964. It would have comprised three identical spaceplanes strapped together and arranged in two stages. During ascent the two outer spaceplanes, which formed the first stage, would detach and glide back individually to earth. It was canceled after the last study of the design in 1967 due to a lack of funds for development.

The Space Shuttle era

NASA started the Space Shuttle design process in 1968, with the vision of creating a fully reusable spaceplane using a crewed fly-back booster. This concept proved expensive and complex, therefore the design was scaled back to reusable solid rocket boosters and an expendable external tank. Space Shuttle Columbia launched and landed 27 times and was lost with all crew on the 28th landing attempt; Challenger launched and landed 9 times and was lost with all crew on the 10th launch attempt; Discovery launched and landed 39 times; Atlantis launched and landed 33 times; Endeavour launched and landed 25 times. The last mission of Space Shuttle, STS-135, landed back on Earth on 21 July 2011 after delivering supplies and equipment to the International Space Station ISS.

In 1986 President Ronald Reagan called for an air-breathing scramjet National Aerospace Plane (NASP)/X-30. The project failed due to technical issues and was canceled in 1993.

In the late 1980s a fully reusable version of the Soviet Energia rocket, the Energia II, was proposed. Its boosters and core would have had the capability of landing separately on a runway. This concept was not developed and even the original expendable Energia flew only twice in the late 1980s. The second flight launched the reusable spacecraft Buran on its first and only, uncrewed mission.

In the 1990s the McDonnell Douglas Delta Clipper VTOL SSTO proposal progressed to the testing phase. The DC-X prototype demonstrated rapid turnaround time and automatic computer control.

In mid-1990s, British research evolved an earlier HOTOL design into the Skylon design, which remained in development at Reaction Engines until 2024 when the company went bankrupt. In 2025, the European Space Agency (ESA) announced a plan to use technologies developed for Skylon's SABRE engine in its future Flying Engine Testbed initiative INVICTUS.

From the late 1990s to the 2000s, the European Space Agency (ESA) studied the recovery of the Ariane 5 solid rocket boosters. The last recovery attempt took place in 2009.

Two commercial ventures, Kistler Aerospace (later Rocketplane Kistler) and Rotary Rocket, attempted to build reusable privately developed rockets in the 1990s before going bankrupt.

NASA proposed reusable concepts to replace the Shuttle technology, to be demonstrated under the X-33 and X-34 programs, which were both cancelled in the early 2000s due to rising costs and technical issues.

The Ansari X Prize contest, created in 1996, was intended to develop private suborbital reusable vehicles. Many private companies competed, with the winner, Scaled Composites, reaching the Kármán line twice in a two-week period in 2004 with their reusable SpaceShipOne. The design was later developed into the space tourism vehicle SpaceShipTwo, which flew on multiple suborbital flights, but never reached the Kármán line.

Between 1999 and 2004, the German DLR was working on two reusable launch vehicle concepts within the ASTRA (Ausgewählte Systeme und Technologien für Raumtransport) program. The Liquid Fly-back Booster (LFBB) was a winged horizontal landing booster for the Ariane family of rockets. The Hopper spacecraft was a rocket sled-launched spaceplane. In 2004, DLR performed a series of drop tests with Phoenix RLV, a subscale prototype of Hopper, at the North European Aerospace Test range in Kiruna.

In 2001, the Russian Khrunichev space centre proposed a reusable fly-back booster Baikal for the Angara family of rockets. This vehicle never flew. A similar concept was later proposed by Roscosmos in 2018 with no subsequent updates.

In 2005, NASA initiated the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program supporting private companies in developing uncrewed cargo vehicles for resupplying the ISS. This program has briefly resurrected the reusable Kistler K-1 concept by Rocketplane Kistler before it was cancelled for lack of private funding. However, another recipient of COTS funding from NASA, SpaceX, managed to use this support to keep operating and to develop its Falcon 9 rocket, which later became partially reusable.

2010s

In 2012, SpaceX started a flight test program with experimental vehicles. These subsequently led to the development of the Falcon 9 reusable rocket launcher. SpaceX achieved the first vertical soft landing of a reusable orbital rocket stage on December 21, 2015, after delivering 11 Orbcomm OG-2 commercial satellites into low Earth orbit. The first reuse of a Falcon 9 first stage occurred on 30 March 2017. Since then, SpaceX has been routinely recovering and reusing their first stages, as well as fairings.

In 2015, Airbus Defence and Space proposed the Adeline reusable engine pod for the Ariane family of rockets. In 2018, CNES declared the concept not financially interesting and it hasn't been developed further.

On 23 November 2015 the New Shepard rocket became the first Vertical Take-off, Vertical Landing (VTVL) sub-orbital rocket to reach space by passing the Kármán line (100 km or 62 mi), reaching 329,839 ft (100,535 m) before returning for a propulsive landing.

In November 2016, the European Space Agency (ESA) selected the Spanish Company PLD Space to start developing a reusable first stage under the agency's FLPP program. This project became known as Miura 5 in 2018, when PLD Space redesigned the vehicle to increase its payload capacity after a review by ESA. In April 2019, PLD Space performed a successful drop and recovery test of a Miura 5 first stage demonstrator.

In 2017, the German Aerospace Center (DLR) started working on the Reusable Flight Experiment (ReFEx) aiming to demonstrate a winged fly-back rocket booster. As of 2024, its launch was planned for late 2026 atop a Brazilian VSB-30 sounding rocket from the Koonibba Test Range in Australia.

In 2018, China was researching possible reusability for the Long March 8 system. This had been later abandoned. However, multiple Chinese private companies developing reusable launch vehicles have been performing VTVL test flights of varying complexity and success since 2019.

In March 2019, the German Aerospace Center (DLR) started working on the EU-funded project RETALT aimed at developing retropropulsion technologies for reusable rockets.

In 2019 Rocket Lab announced plans to recover and reuse the first stage of their Electron launch vehicle, intending to use parachutes and mid-air retrieval. On 20 November 2020, Rocket Lab successfully returned an Electron first stage from an orbital launch, the stage softly splashing down in the Pacific Ocean. Nine first stage boosters were recovered between November 2020 and January 2024, however after Rocket Lab re-used certain components from the recovered boosters (including Rutherford rocket engines), the company decided not to re-use Electron first stage boosters, citing decreasing marginal financial savings from the booster recovery program, instead focusing on the larger, partially reusable Neutron rocket.

2020s

In 2020, the only operational reusable orbital-class launch systems were the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy, the latter of which is based upon the Falcon 9. SpaceX was also developing the fully reusable Starship launch system. Blue Origin was developing its New Glenn orbital rocket with a reusable first stage.

In October 2020, Roscosmos signed a development contract for Amur, a new launcher with a reusable first stage. In 2024, Roscosmos expected the vehicle to fly no earlier than 2030 and announced intention to start developing a prototype first stage in 2025.

In December 2020, the European Space Agency (ESA) signed contracts to start developing THEMIS, a prototype reusable first stage. In September 2025, the first THEMIS prototype has been fully assembled at its launch site at Esrange in Sweden. Lessons learned through the development and testing of THEMIS, as well as smaller-scale demonstrators CALLISTO, FROG-T, and FROG-H will be used in development of future European reusable launchers Maia and Ariane Next.

In January 2022, the German Aerospace Center (DLR) initiated the Advanced Technologies for High Energetic Atmospheric Flight of Launcher Stages (ATHEAt) program for demonstrating various technologies related to launch vehicle reusability. The first suborbital test flight of the program successfully launched on 6 October 2025 from Andøya Space in Norway and the second, using a different rocket booster, is scheduled for 2026 from Esrange Space Center in Sweden.

In 2022, China revealed plans to use reusable first stages on the new Long March 9 and Long March 10 rockets, which are expected to serve the country's crewed Lunar program. In August and September 2025, China performed first hot fire tests of Long March 10's first stage, including a restart sequence likely related to first stage landing maneuvres needed for reusability. Long March 10's first stage performed its first soft landing on water on 11 February 2026 during the launch abort test of the Mengzhou spacecraft.

In October 2023, the Spanish company PLD Space, supported by ESA's FLPP funding, tested various technologies for its future reusable launch vehicle Miura 5 by successfully launching the suborbital rocket Miura 1 from the El Arenosillo Test Centre in Huelva, Spain. The company claimed that as much as 70% of the technology needed for Miura 5 could be tested on Miura 1.

In September 2024, the Indian government has approved plans to develop a new partially reusable rocket NGLV. The vehicle, with a VTVL first stage, is expected to be operational around 2033.

In November 2024, China debuted the Long March 12 rocket, whose later version Long March 12A is designed to have a reusable first stage. In January 2025, the Longxing-2 VTVL demonstrator, likely a precursor to Long March 12A's first stage, flew on a high altitude suborbital test flight. The outcome of this test was not made public. Long March 12A had its maiden flight on 23 December 2025. The rocket successfully reached orbit but the first stage was destroyed during its landing attempt.

In 2025, Arianespace proposed making Ariane 6 partially reusable by substituting the rocket's solid-fuel expendable boosters with Liquid Reusable Boosters (LRBs) derived from the Maia rocket under development by Arianespace's subsidiary MaiaSpace. The development of the proposal was funded by ESA's Boosters for European Space Transportation (BEST!) initiative.

In June 2025, the Japanese company Honda performed a successful 300 m high VTVL flight of a liquid-propellant demonstrator rocket equipped with grid fins and landing legs.

In September 2025, the European Space Agency (ESA) awarded a contract to the Italian company Avio to start developing a reusable upper stage demonstrator. Later in 2025, ESA also awarded a related contract to the Italian company Ingegneria Dei Sistemi (IDS) to design a reusable rocket stage recovery vessel. Meanwhile, Avio has been developing the FD1 and FD2 rocket demonstrators of methalox engines for their future Vega Next rocket, with possible reusability-related features like grid fins.

On 20 October 2025, the Chinese company LandSpace performed a static-fire test of its new rocket Zhuque-3 intended for partial reusability. The first stage of the rocket was equipped with grid fins, aerodynamic chines, and landing legs. The rocket successfully launched and reached orbit on 3 December 2025 but the first stage was destroyed during its landing attempt.

On 13 November 2025, Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket launched NASA's twin ESCAPADE spacecraft to Mars on its second flight. The rocket's first stage then successfully landed on a barge in the Atlantic Ocean. This made Blue Origin the second company after SpaceX to recover an orbital-class booster by a propulsive landing. The same first stage, with a new set of engines, was then successfully reused on 19 April 2026 during the third flight of New Glenn, although the flight's primary mission failed due to a second stage issue.

List of reusable launch vehicles

Existing

Planned

List of reusable spacecraft

Main article: Reusable spacecraft § List of reusable orbital spacecraft

List of reusable suborbital spacecrafts

As of 1 December 2024.