Chinese firm lands booster in reusable rocket milestone
Chinese startup LandSpace has recovered the first stage of its Zhuque-3 rocket, joining SpaceX and Blue Origin as the only private companies to land an orbital-class booster and narrowing China's gap with the. . .
Chinese startup LandSpace has recovered the first stage of its Zhuque-3 rocket, joining SpaceX and Blue Origin as the only private companies to land an orbital-class booster and narrowing China's gap with the US in reusable rockets. The ability to return, recover and reuse a booster is crucial to reduce cost and make it easier to put satellites into orbit, turning space exploration into a commercially viable business similar to civil aviation. The achievement occurred on Wednesday during LandSpace's second attempt to land the engine-packed first stage of the Zhuque-3, a stainless-steel rocket billed as China's answer to SpaceX's Falcon 9. The 66. 1-metre Zhuque-3 lifted off from the Dongfeng Commercial Space Innovation Pilot Zone in northwestern China, with the nine-engine first stage - or booster - returning to a landing site in the province of Gansu, 390km southeast of the launch pad, state media reported. The landing is likely to increase investor confidence as LandSpace pursues a listing on the Shanghai Stock Exchange's tech-focused STAR Market. LandSpace said the Zhuque-3 was made of stainless steel, which offers greater heat resistance and the prospect of reduced production costs compared with the Falcon 9's aluminium-lithium alloy body. It also runs on methane and liquid oxygen, which can burn cleaner than the Falcon 9's liquid oxygen and kerosene mix. The rocket could lift 14. 2 tonnes to low Earth orbit on a one-way trip versus the Falcon 9's 22. 8 tonnes, LandSpace said. LandSpace aims for the Zhuque-3 booster to be reused up to 20 times. SpaceX launches the Falcon 9 about 150 times a year, or roughly three times a week, and reuses its booster dozens of times. Wednesday's launch marked China's fourth orbital booster recovery attempt. LandSpace made history in December 2025 as the first Chinese entity to conduct a reusable rocket test. The rocket entered orbit as planned, but its first stage did not complete a controlled landing. Weeks later, China launched the state-developed Long March 12A, which also reached orbit but failed in recovery. In July, China successfully tested an experimental booster retrieval system using a net-capture system on a floating seaborne platform, becoming just the second country to land an orbital-class rocket. With Wednesday's landing, LandSpace has now delivered China's first successful ground-based, leg-landed recovery of an orbital-class booster. LandSpace plans to reuse a recovered first-stage booster in the next six months, a step it says will lay a foundation for future high-frequency and low-cost commercial launches.