LandSpace achieved a serious milestone for Chinese language business rocketry this week when the primary stage of its Zhuque-3 efficiently soft-landed on a restoration pad within the Gobi Desert following its second orbital flight.
Nevertheless, the booster later tipped over after a post-landing hearth compromised one among its legs, underscoring that propulsive restoration is just step one towards operational reusability. The corporate had initially needed to refly the booster.
As beforehand reported by NASASpaceflight, the Zhuque-3 Y2 lifted off from the Dongfeng Industrial House Innovation Pilot Zone on the Jiuquan Satellite tv for pc Launch Heart on August 18, 2026 (23:35 UTC).
Powered by 9 Tianque-12A methalox engines, the 66-meter stainless-steel automobile efficiently deployed the Honghu-03 communications satellite tv for pc prototype into low Earth orbit.
After stage separation simply over two minutes into flight, the booster carried out a three-engine re-entry burn close to 80 km altitude, used 4 grid fins for atmospheric steering, and executed a touchdown burn starting a number of kilometers above the bottom.
The 4 touchdown legs deployed within the ultimate tens of meters, and the stage touched down close to the middle of the pad roughly 390 km downrange in Minqin County, Gansu Province.
This marked China’s first profitable land-based restoration of an orbital-class booster utilizing touchdown legs and solely the second Chinese language orbital booster restoration total, following the Chang Zheng 10B’s web catch at sea in July.
Zhuque-3 joins Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy, New Glenn, and Chang Zheng 10B as one of many few orbital-class automobiles to show first-stage restoration. It’s the second such automobile (after Falcon 9 and New Glenn) to attain a propulsive touchdown on strong floor.
The graph has hockey-sticked.
Reusability shouldn’t be a fad.
The variety of organizations to land an orbital-class rocket booster has quadrupled prior to now 8 months. pic.twitter.com/BU3BMSg3uU
— Ryan Caton (@dpoddolphinpro) August 20, 2026
The success was constructed straight on classes from the December 2025 maiden flight, which reached orbit however suffered an anomalous combustion throughout the touchdown burn, inflicting a high-speed influence close to the pad.
For Y2, LandSpace diminished the variety of engines used throughout the touchdown burn to enhance reliability, improve thermal safety, and add predictive landing-point functionality to the autonomous security system.
Video and social media imagery from the restoration website present the booster standing upright on its 4 legs instantly after landing. Residual liquid methane and liquid oxygen then ignited close to the bottom, producing a fireplace that broken or weakened one of many (reportedly carbon-fiber composite) touchdown legs.
The leg failed, and the stainless steel stage toppled over. No official detailed assertion from LandSpace on the tip-over had been launched on the time of writing, however the visible proof is obvious.
The corporate had beforehand indicated plans to try reflight of a recovered booster inside about six months. That timeline is now far much less possible for this particular automobile, although the core problem, managed propulsive touchdown from orbital velocity, has been solved.
Strengthening touchdown legs and bettering post-landing propellant administration and hearth suppression are comparatively extra simple engineering duties.
The sequence intently mirrors an incident involving SpaceX’s Falcon 9 booster B1086. On March 2, 2025, throughout a Starlink mission, B1086 efficiently landed on the droneship *Simply Learn the Directions*.
An off-nominal hearth within the aft part then broken one touchdown leg, inflicting the booster to tip over and be misplaced roughly 48 seconds after landing.
Falcon 9 B1086 returns to Florida in a non-optimal situation, following a post-landing hearth on the droneship.
Footage from pic.twitter.com/wqDgvuGJ4O
— Gav | spaceOFFSHORE (@spaceOFFSHORE) March 5, 2025
Falcon 9 B1086 returns to Florida in a non-optimal situation, following a post-landing hearth on the droneship.Each occasions spotlight a vulnerability inherent to leg-based landings: residual propellants, thermal situations, and structural masses after a high-energy return can nonetheless compromise the automobile even after a profitable landing. Nevertheless, SpaceX has loved numerous successes with Falcon 9.
Approaches that get rid of touchdown legs, equivalent to Starship’s mechanical “chopstick” tower catches or comparable tower/web methods underneath growth, sidestep this explicit failure mode by transferring help masses to floor infrastructure moderately than vehicle-mounted deployable buildings.
Cosmoleap, for instance, is concentrating on a Starship-style catch tower for its Yueqian-1.
Zhuque-3 is one among a number of partially reusable Chinese language automobiles in growth or flight check. The chrome steel methalox design is comparable in scale to Falcon 9 (barely shorter at 66 m however wider at 4.5 m diameter) and at the moment affords roughly half the payload capability to LEO (round 8 tonnes in reusable configuration).
An upgraded Zhuque-3E with enhanced engines, an extended fairing, and roughly doubled payload is deliberate.
LandSpace beforehand flew the world’s first orbital methalox rocket with Zhuque-2 in 2023. The Zhuque-3 touchdown, even with the next tip-over, advances the corporate from expertise demonstration towards operational reusability.
With booster restoration key to decreasing launch prices, China’s business and state packages are coming into a brand new part of speedy iteration on return and reuse applied sciences. Additional flights of Zhuque-3 and its contemporaries will present how shortly these methods mature.
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