The floodgates are open after another Chinese company lands a reusable rocket - Ars Technica

Overview

The floodgates are open after another Chinese company lands a reusable rocket

“We will put the booster back into service for another flight as soon as possible.”

Details

It has been a little more than a month since China recovered an orbital-class rocket booster for the first time. A second launch operator accomplished a similar feat Tuesday in another sign of China’s growing launch capability.

It took 10 years for a second US launch company, Blue Origin, to propulsively land an orbital-class booster after Space X did it with the Falcon 9 rocket in 2015. Space X has since added a second reusable rocket to its fleet with Starship and its Super Heavy booster. Perhaps a third American company will join Space X and Blue Origin’s club in 2027. Rocket Lab, Stoke Space, Relativity Space, and Firefly Aerospace—working in partnership with Northrop Grumman—are working on reusable rockets that could make their first flights in the next couple of years.

A similar number of launch companies are working on reusable rockets in China. Some of them operate under the auspices of the sprawling state-owned China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC). Others are more commercial in nature, driven by capital investment from private industry.

After years of development, these Chinese launch companies made their first attempts to land their new rocket boosters last December. A company named Land Space was first when it launched the first test flight of its new Zhuque-3 rocket. The rocket successfully reached orbit but missed its landing. Later that month, CASC’s Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology launched a new rocket named the Long March 12A with similar results.

Then, a third rocket, the Long March 10B from another CASC division, became the first to achieve a successful booster recovery July 10. The Long March 10B’s first stage was caught by a net recovery mechanism on an offshore platform in the South China Sea. Now, 40 days later, Land Space’s Zhuque-3 has flown again, this time on a flight punctuated by a picture-perfect landing of its first-stage booster in northwestern China.

The Zhuque-3, or ZQ-3, rocket lifted off from a commercial launch zone at China’s Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center at 7:35 pm EDT (23:35 UTC) Tuesday, about an hour after sunrise Wednesday at the spaceport in the Gobi Desert. Nine methane-fueled engines powered the 216-foot-tall (66-meter) rocket on a course southeast from Jiuquan, then the rocket’s upper stage took over the task of placing a single satellite into orbit.

The rocket’s first stage, made of stainless steel, soared to the edge of space, then maneuvered toward a prepared landing zone some 240 miles (390 kilometers) downrange, settling to a propulsive touchdown on four extendable landing legs. Land Space, founded in 2015, declared the mission a total success.

MISSION SUCCESS | Zhu Que-3 Y2 Reusable Launch Vehicle Achieved Full Success in Orbital Insertion and First-Stage Recovery

On August 19, 2026, at 07:35 (UTC+8), the Zhu Que-3 (ZQ-3) Y2 reusable launch vehicle lifted off from the Dongfeng Commercial Space Innovation Pilot Zone.… pic.twitter.com/fshij Oxgtc — Land Space (@Land Space_Tech) August 19, 2026

On August 19, 2026, at 07:35 (UTC+8), the Zhu Que-3 (ZQ-3) Y2 reusable launch vehicle lifted off from the Dongfeng Commercial Space Innovation Pilot Zone.… pic.twitter.com/fshij Oxgtc

“This mission marks China’s first-ever successful recovery attempt of the first stage of an orbital-class launch vehicle using landing legs, and China’s first successful booster recovery on land,” Land Space said in a statement. “It is a pivotal flight test for Zhuque-3 as it transitions from the technological demonstration and verification phase toward the engineering application phase of reusability.”

Land Space’s engineers made several changes to the rocket after the crash landing of the first Zhuque-3 booster in December. The updates included using just a single engine for the final phase of landing and modifications to the rocket’s heat shield for protection from reentry conditions.

“This mission lays a solid foundation for subsequent stages, including post-recovery inspection and maintenance, reuse flights, and commercial applications,” Land Space said.

“The first stage underwent high-altitude gliding, followed by ignition for deceleration upon re-entry, aerodynamic glide control, and finally, a landing burn to slow down,” Dai Zheng, head of the Zhuque-3 project at Land Space, told Chinese state television. “That final braking maneuver was executed beautifully, achieving a soft landing and realizing our original design goal of a ‘one-shot reverse-parking’ maneuver while moving at high speed.

The Zhuque-3’s basic design can place a payload of more than 17,600 pounds (8 metric tons) into low-Earth orbit after accounting for the fuel reserves required for booster recovery. Land Space eventually plans to debut an upgraded Zhuque-3 carrying more propellant and using more powerful engines, raising its payload capacity to more than 40,000 pounds (18.3 metric tons) in reusable mode or a few tons more with an expendable booster.

The Zhuque-3 builds on Land Space’s earlier work on a smaller rocket named the Zhuque-2, which became the world’s first methane-fueled launcher to reach orbit in 2023.

The Zhuque-3 booster bears a striking resemblance to Space X’s Falcon 9, with grid fins and landing legs. The Falcon 9 uses kerosene fuel, while the Zhuque-3 uses methane.

China’s rocket companies still have some work to do to demonstrate booster turnaround and reuse. The Long March 10B booster recovered last month is supposed to fly again before the end of the year, according to CASC. Land Space did not immediately say when it might reuse the Zhuque-3 booster, but the company previously said it plans to fly each booster at least 20 times.

With the benefits of reuse, Land Space says its medium-lift rocket will be optimized for deploying Chinese satellite mega-constellations, such as those for broadband connectivity. Chinese officials project the country’s two largest constellations, Guowang and Qianfan, will require 700 to 800 rocket launches over the next seven to 10 years.

Several more Chinese rockets with reusable boosters could fly in the next few months. Next in line might be the second flight and landing attempt of the Long March 12A. Others include the Long March 12B backed by the Chinese government, the Pallas-1 from Galactic Energy, the Hyperbola-3 from i Space, and Space Pioneer’s Tianlong-3, which failed on its first test launch earlier this year. It would not be surprising if one or more of these Chinese rockets launch and land before one of the next crop of American rockets does so.

The US rocket industry has long been dominant in the two most important metrics: number of orbital launches and payload mass to orbit. This is almost entirely thanks to the growth of Space X and its pioneering reusable Falcon 9 rocket. For the past few years, Falcon 9s have flown an average of three times per week, usually on fully loaded missions to deliver more capacity to Space X’s Starlink Internet network.

But Space X is looking to wind down the Falcon 9 rocket soon and could stop offering the workhorse launch vehicle to commercial customers after 2028. The replacement is Starship, a massive rocket with at least five times the payload capacity of the Falcon 9. It is designed for full reuse to support a more rapid launch cadence than the Falcon 9, which has likely already had its busiest year.

Starship remains experimental, with many milestones to go before it can fully replace the Falcon 9. Starship also has a history of delays, so further schedule slips may cause Space X to reconsider the retirement of its workhorse. China is working on a Starship-like rocket called the Long March 9, but it won’t fly until sometime after 2030.

The payload envelope for Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket falls in between Falcon 9 and Starship. New Glenn appeared poised for a breakout year after the first reflight of a recovered first-stage booster, but the rocket is now grounded after an explosion on the launch pad in Florida in May.

The other major US launch provider, United Launch Alliance, has no near-term plans for a reusable architecture. Nobody else is close, either.

This all leaves companies like Rocket Lab, Stoke, Relativity, and others with a potential opening in the market for their medium- to heavy-class rockets once Falcon 9 is off the stage.

China, meanwhile, has a bench that is arguably just as deep as the US launch industry. None of China’s space companies—even the colossal state-owned CASC—can come close to matching Space X’s rapid-fire launch schedule. Collectively, they only launch about half as often as Space X.

But that is with a fleet of entirely expendable rockets. China’s foray into the realm of reusable rockets could change that.

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Key Takeaways

• The floodgates are open after another Chinese company lands a reusable rocket

• “We will put the booster back into service for another flight as soon as possible

• It has been a little more than a month since China recovered an orbital-class rocket booster for the first time

• It took 10 years for a second US launch company, Blue Origin, to propulsively land an orbital-class booster after Space X did it with the Falcon 9 rocket in 2015

• A similar number of launch companies are working on reusable rockets in China