HELSINKI — Landspace successfully landed the first stage of its Zhuque-3 rocket Tuesday following the second launch of the rocket from the Gobi Desert.
The second Zhuque-3 rocket lifted off at 7:35 p.m. Eastern (2335 UTC) Aug. 18 from Dongfeng Commercial Space Innovation Test Zone within the national Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center.
The first and second stages separated 137 seconds into the flight, and the first stage completed a powered descent and vertical landing at a landing site around 390 kilometers downrange in Minqin County, Gansu Province, at 7:43 p.m. Eastern. Landing legs deployed in the final moments of the landing burn ahead of a soft touchdown.
The second stage went on to insert the Honghu 03 satellite into orbit, according to a post-launch Landspace statement. The Honghu 03 satellite was built by Landspace’s satellite manufacturing affiliate, Hongqing Technology, which last month raised more than $191 million.
The successful vertical takeoff, vertical landing is China’s second booster recovery, occurring just over a month after China became the second country to recover an orbital booster with the Long March 10B, that time using a drone vessel at sea equipped with a net-capture system.
Globally, Landspace becomes the third entity, after SpaceX and Blue Origin, to successfully land an orbital booster on legs.
Zhuque-3 is a two-stage, stainless steel rocket with a diameter of 4.5 meters and a mass at liftoff of about 570 metric tons. The rocket stands approximately 66 meters tall on the pad, with its first stage powered by nine Tianque-series methane-liquid oxygen engines. The rocket has a payload capacity to low Earth orbit (LEO) of 21,000 kilograms when expendable, or up to 18,300 kg when the first stage is recovered downrange, making it comparable to the Falcon 9 in terms of payload capacity.
The Zhuque-3 Y2 booster landing comes eight and a half months after the debut flight of the Zhuque-3, which reached orbit, but the first stage recovery attempt ended in failure during the latter stages of powered descent. That mission marked China’s first orbital booster recovery attempt. It was followed weeks later by another attempt by state-owned CASC with the Long March 12A, which also failed.
The post-mission statement from Landspace noted a number of technical changes made in the wake of the failed landing attempt with the first Zhuque-3. These include a reduced number of engines used in the landing burn, which simplified the system and improved reliability, adding a “predicted landing point” to the onboard autonomous safety control system, and improved thermal protection to handle the extreme reentry heating and structural loads.
Landspace joins CASC in successfully recovering an orbital booster and the company says the mission means it moves from the recovery technology verification phase to engineering-scale reuse verification.
“This mission lays a solid foundation for subsequent recovery, maintenance, reuse flights, and commercial applications,” Landspace said.
Landspace stated early in the year that it aimed to launch the second Zhuque-3 in Q2 2026, targeting a reuse of the expected recovered first stage in Q4. The company did not provide a timeline for reuse in the post-mission statement.
Zhuque-3 is expected to support China’s efforts to build the Guowang and Thousand Sails megaconstellations in low Earth orbit. The success will also have relevance for LandSpace’s pending STAR Market IPO bid, and puts the company well ahead of commercial competitors in establishing a reliable medium-lift rocket and demonstrating recoverability and attempting reusability.
The launch was China’s 60th orbital launch attempt of 2026, following successful Long March 12 and Long March 2C missions over the past weekend.
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