China's LandSpace makes history, recovers rocket booster after launch

China’s commercial rocket firm LandSpace successfully recovered the first-stage booster of its Zhuque-3 rocket after an orbital launch. This makes it the country’s first commercial rocket to both reach orbit and recover its first stage, South China Morning Post reported on Wednesday.

 

The successful recovery marks a major step in China’s push to develop lower-cost, reusable rockets, with LandSpace becoming only the fourth entity globally to recover a launch vehicle, after the US’s SpaceX and Blue Origin, and China’s state-owned Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation.

 

The development also comes as Elon Musk’s SpaceX awaits approval from the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) for the first recovery flight of its Super Heavy booster, which, like Zhuque-3, is made of stainless steel.

 

From launch to landing

 

The 66-metre LandSpace rocket, which is powered by liquid methane and oxygen, lifted off at 7:35 am (5:05 am IST) on Wednesday from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre in the Gobi Desert and delivered a Honghu-3 internet satellite into its designated orbit, SCMP reported, quoting state news agency Xinhua.

 

The rocket’s first stage returned to Earth and touched down vertically in Gansu province’s Minqin county, around 390 km southeast of the launch pad.

 

The successful recovery came on LandSpace’s second attempt. During the Zhuque-3 rocket’s maiden flight in December last year, its second stage successfully reached orbit, but the first stage erupted in a fireball during its final powered descent towards the landing pad, the SCMP report stated.

 

The recovery of the first stage failed as its engine did not reignite as required when it was about 3 km above the ground, the project’s chief had said at the time.

 

Why reusable rockets matter for China

 

With the successful landing, Zhuque-3 has become China’s second orbital rocket to demonstrate first-stage recovery. The first was the state-developed Long March-10B, whose first stage was captured by a huge net on an offshore platform after launching from Hainan province in July.

 

The two rockets have broadly similar payload capacities and are in about the same class as SpaceX’s workhorse Falcon 9. In their expendable configurations, Long March-10B and Zhuque-3 can carry about 22 tonnes and 21 tonnes to low Earth orbit, respectively. With their first stages recovered, the figures fall to about 16 tonnes and 18 tonnes, the SCMP report stated.

 

The recovery of the two rockets could prove crucial to the construction of China’s broadband internet megaconstellations. Like SpaceX’s Starlink, which has deployed more than 10,000 operational satellites and attracted over 12 million customers worldwide, Chinese projects such as Guowang and Qianfan envisage eventually placing more than 10,000 satellites in orbit to provide global broadband coverage, creating both a potential global market and infrastructure of strategic military importance.

 

Guowang and Qianfan have each deployed only around 200 satellites so far, with their expansion constrained partly by China’s lack of a reusable workhorse comparable to the Falcon 9.