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LandSpace lands Zhuque-3 booster on second flight, a China first

LandSpace landed Zhuque-3's booster on its second flight, a China first, but the recovered stage later tipped over on the pad.

LandSpace launched its Zhuque-3 rocket on its second flight from the Dongfeng Commercial Space Innovation Pilot Zone at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center at 23:35 UTC on Aug. 18, carrying a prototype LEO communications satellite for its subsidiary Hongqing Technology, per SpaceNews, Space.com and NASASpaceflight. About 137 seconds after stage separation, the first stage completed a powered vertical landing on deployable legs roughly 390 km downrange in Minqin County, Gansu province, becoming the first Chinese company to recover an orbital-class booster and the first recovery in China using landing legs rather than net capture. Zhuque-3's December 2025 debut flight reached orbit, but its booster crashed during an earlier landing attempt. LandSpace said the mission moves Zhuque-3 "from the technological demonstration and verification phase toward the engineering application phase of reusability," per Space.com. LandSpace was targeting a reflight of the recovered booster within six months, a company representative told SpaceNews. Days later, the booster tipped over on the recovery pad: a fire broke out near its base during propellant offloading and one of its four landing legs failed, per NASASpaceflight and China in Space. China in Space reported the fall damaged the interstage and both propellant tanks and deformed two of the booster's nine Tianque-12A engine nozzles.