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

what happened

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.

why it matters

LandSpace becomes the third entity worldwide, after SpaceX and Blue Origin, to land an orbital-class booster on legs, and the fourth overall to recover an orbital booster by any method, joining state-owned CASC's net-captured Long March 10B from July, per SCMP. A working reusable methalox vehicle would let LandSpace compete more directly on launch cost with China's state and commercial launch rivals as they scale up satellite manufacturing and megaconstellation buildouts. The post-landing loss tempers the reflight timeline LandSpace set only days earlier, a reminder that a successful touchdown does not by itself demonstrate operational reusability.

for who

Chinese commercial launch buyers and rival reusable-launch developers

signal-to-noise

quick facts

Companies

LandSpace

Category

launch

Impact

seismic

SNR

4 / 5

Event date

2026-08-18

Published

2026-08-19 05:32 UTC