LandSpace recovered the first stage of its Zhuque-3 rocket on solid ground on August 19, the first time a Chinese commercial company has landed an orbital-class booster on land rather than at sea. The achievement puts Zhuque-3 alongside Falcon 9, New Glenn, and Long March-10B as the only orbital-class rockets to have recovered a first stage.
Two paths, one goal
The Zhuque-3 Y2 mission lifted off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center’s Dongfeng commercial pad and reached orbit on its second flight. The booster then flipped, relit its nine methalox-fueled Tianque-12A engines, and deployed four landing legs to touch down vertically on a pad rather than a barge. The vehicle stands 66 meters tall and generates roughly 7,200 kilo-newtons of thrust at first-stage liftoff.
Xinhua called it the first landing-leg recovery of a reusable launch vehicle’s first stage in China. The milestone lands just 40 days after Long March-10B pulled off a sea-platform net recovery, meaning China has now proven out both of the recovery methods that underpin Falcon 9-style reuse – offshore net capture and propulsive leg landing – within a single six-week window.
Not fully reusable yet
The landing itself did not end cleanly. According to NASASpaceFlight, residual methane and oxygen ignited near the base of the booster after touchdown, weakening one of its landing legs and tipping the stage over. LandSpace had planned to refly a recovered booster within six months.
The failure doesn’t undercut the core result. Controlled propulsive descent from orbital velocity — the hard part — worked. What’s left, reinforcing the legs and managing leftover propellant after touchdown, is a narrower engineering problem than the one LandSpace just solved.
LandSpace is one of several Chinese commercial launch firms chasing SpaceX-style reuse, alongside CAS Space, Deep Blue Aerospace, and iSpace. With two state-linked and commercial vehicles now demonstrating first-stage recovery in the same 40-day stretch, the race to a fully reusable Chinese rocket has shifted from proving the concept to closing the reliability gap.
Sources:
- Zhuque-3 Completes Second Flight with Successful First-Stage Landing – NASASpaceFlight.com
- LandSpace’s Zhuque-3 topples following milestone landing – NASASpaceFlight.com
- China Focus: China launches Zhuque-3, achieving its first rocket recovery on land – Xinhua
- China’s Landspace recovers booster with second orbital launch of Zhuque-3 rocket – SpaceNews