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. Reusable launch vehicles do not need to make these parts for each launch, therefore reducing its launch cost significantly. However, these benefits are diminished by the cost of recovery and refurbishment.
Reusable launch vehicles may contain additional avionics and propellant, making them heavier than their expendable counterparts. Reused parts may need to enter the atmosphere and navigate through it, so they are often equipped with heat shields, grid fins, and other flight control surfaces. By modifying their shape, spaceplanes can leverage aviation mechanics to aid in its recovery, such as gliding or lift. In the atmosphere, parachutes or retrorockets may also be needed to slow it down further. Reusable parts may also need specialized recovery facilities such as runways or autonomous spaceport drone ships. Some concepts rely on ground infrastructures such as mass drivers to accelerate the launch vehicle beforehand.
Since at least in the early 20th century, single-stage-to-orbit reusable launch vehicles have existed in science fiction. In the 1970s, the first reusable launch vehicle, the Space Shuttle, was developed. However, in the 1990s, due to the program's failure to meet expectations, reusable launch vehicle concepts were reduced to prototype testing. The rise of private spaceflight companies in the 2000s and 2010s lead to a resurgence of their development, such as in SpaceShipOne, New Shepard, Electron, Falcon 9, and Falcon Heavy. Many launch vehicles are now expected to debut with reusability in the 2020s, such as Starship, New Glenn, Neutron, Maia, Miura 5, Long March 10 and 12, Terran R, Stoke Space Nova, and the suborbital Dawn Mk-II Aurora.
The impact of reusability in launch vehicles has been foundational in the space flight industry. So much so that in 2024, the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station initiated a 50-year forward looking plan for the Cape that involved major infrastructure upgrades to support a higher anticipated launch cadence and landing sites for the new generation of vehicles.

Configurations

Fully reusable launch vehicle

Several companies are currently 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.
, 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. The Super Heavy booster was caught successfully by the "chopstick system" on Orbital Pad A for the first time. The Ship completed its second successful reentry and returned for a controlled splashdown in the Indian Ocean. The test marked the second instance that could be considered meeting all requirements to be fully reusable.

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 that acted as an orbital insertion stage, but it did not reuse the External Tank that fed the RS-25 engines. 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. The engines would splashdown on an inflatable aeroshell, then be recovered. 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, having already surpassed Space Shuttle Main Engine number 2019's record of 19 flights. As of 2024, Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy are the only orbital rockets to reuse their boosters, although multiple other systems are in development. All aircraft-launched rockets reuse the aircraft.
Other than that, a range of non-rocket liftoff systems have been proposed and explored over time as reusable systems for liftoff, from balloons to space elevators. Existing examples are systems which employ winged horizontal jet-engine powered liftoff. Such aircraft can air launch expendable rockets and can because of that be considered partially reusable systems if the aircraft is thought of as the first stage of the launch vehicle. An example of this configuration is the Orbital Sciences Pegasus. For suborbital flight the SpaceShipTwo uses for liftoff a carrier plane, its mothership the Scaled Composites White Knight Two. Rocket Lab is working on Neutron, and the European Space Agency is working on Themis. Both vehicles are planned to recover the first stage.
So far, most launch systems achieve orbital insertion with at least partially expended multistaged rockets, particularly with the second and third stages. Only the Space Shuttle has achieved a reuse of the orbital insertion stage, by using the engines and fuel tank of its orbiter. The Buran spaceplane and Starship spacecraft are two other reusable spacecraft that were designed to be able to act as orbital insertion stages and have been produced, however the former only made one uncrewed test flight before the project was cancelled, and the latter is not yet operational, having completed eleven suborbital test flights, as of November 2025, which achieved all of its mission objectives at the fourth flight.

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 as well as a part of its launch system. Contemporary reusable orbital vehicles include the X-37, Dragon 2, and the upcoming Dream Chaser, Indian RLV-TD and the upcoming European Space Rider.
As with launch vehicles, all pure spacecraft during the early decades of human capacity to achieve spaceflight were designed to be single-use items. This was true both for satellites and space probes intended to be left in space for a long time, as well as any object designed to return to Earth such as human-carrying space capsules or the sample return canisters of space matter collection missions like Stardust or Hayabusa. Exceptions to the general rule for space vehicles were the US Gemini SC-2, the Soviet Union spacecraft Vozvraschaemyi Apparat, the US Space Shuttle orbiter and the Soviet Buran. Both of these spaceships were also an integral part of the launch system as well as operating as medium-duration spaceships in space. This began to change in the mid-2010s.
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. This was the beginning of design and operation of a reusable space vehicle. 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., 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; no Starship operational flights have yet occurred.

Entry systems

Heat shield

With possible inflatable heat shields, as developed by the US and China, single-use rockets like the Space Launch System are considered to be retrofitted with such heat shields to salvage the expensive engines, possibly reducing the costs of launches significantly. Heat shields allow an orbiting spacecraft to land safely without expending very much fuel. They need not take the form of inflatable heat shields, they may simply take the form of heat-resistant tiles that prevent heat conduction. Heat shields are also proposed for use in combination with retrograde thrust to allow for full reusability as seen in Starship.

Retrograde thrust

Reusable launch system stages such as the Falcon 9 and the New Shepard employ retrograde burns for re-entry, and landing.

Landing systems

Reusable systems can come in single or multiple stages to orbit configurations. For some or all stages the following landing system types can be employed.

Parachutes and airbags

These are landing systems that employ parachutes and bolstered hard landings, like in a splashdown at sea or a touchdown at land. The latter may require an engine burn just before landing as parachutes alone cannot slow the craft down enough to prevent injury to astronauts. This can be seen in the Soyuz capsule. Though such systems have been in use since the beginning of astronautics to recover space vehicles, only later have the vehicles been reused.
Examples include:
  • Space Shuttle Solid Rocket Boosters
  • SpaceX Dragon capsule

    Horizontal (winged)

Single or main stages, as well as fly-back boosters can employ a horizontal landing system. These vehicles land on earth much like a plane does, but they usually do not use propellant during landing. Vehicles that land horizontally on a runway require wings and undercarriage. These typically consume about 9-12% of the landing vehicle mass, which either reduces the payload or increases the size of the vehicle. Concepts such as lifting bodies offer some reduction in wing mass, as does the delta wing shape of the Space Shuttle. A variant is an in-air-capture tow back system, advocated by a company called EMBENTION with its FALCon project.
Examples include:
  • Space Shuttle orbiter - as part of the main stage
  • Buran spaceplane - acted as an orbital insertion stage, however Polyus could also be used as a second stage for the Energia launch vehicle.
  • Venturestar - a project of NASA
  • Space Shuttle's studied fly-back booster
  • Energia II - an alternative Buran launch system concept
  • OK-GLI - another Buran spacecraft version
  • Liquid Fly-back Booster - a German concept
  • Baikal - a former Russian project
  • Reusable Booster System - a U.S. research project
  • SpaceShipTwo - a spaceplane for space tourism made by Virgin Galactic
  • SpaceShipThree - a spaceplane under development for space tourism made by Virgin Galactic
  • Dawn Mk-II Aurora - a spaceplane under development by Dawn Aerospace
  • XS-1 - another U.S. research project
  • RLV-TD - an ongoing Indian project
  • Reaction Engines Skylon SSTO