China Achieves Historic First Rocket Land Recovery

China has achieved its first-ever rocket land recovery, marking a historic milestone in the nation’s space program and demonstrating significant progress in reusable rocket technology. The Zhuque-3 Y2 launch vehicle lifted off from the Dongfeng Commercial Aerospace Innovation Test Zone at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center at 07:35 Beijing time on August 19, with its first stage successfully landing at a designated pad in Minqin County, Gansu Province, according to Xinhua News.

The mission also delivered the Hongque-03 satellite, developed by Hongqing Technology, a LandSpace subsidiary, into its intended low Earth orbit. This makes the Zhuque-3 the first Chinese launch vehicle to successfully achieve both orbital insertion and land-based recovery using landing legs.

A Milestone in Reusable Rocket Technology

The successful recovery follows the July 10 sea recovery of a Long March 10B rocket first stage using a net-capture system, which was China’s first controlled rocket recovery. With the Zhuque-3’s landing-leg approach, China has now demonstrated both major recovery methods. As Guanchazhe noted, “China’s commercial space industry has officially entered the reusable stage, and China has become the only country in the world that has mastered both net-capture and landing-leg recovery methods.”

The Zhuque-3 is manufactured by LandSpace, a private Chinese commercial space company based in Beijing. The rocket employs a liquid oxygen/methane propellant combination with a stainless steel body, a unique technical approach designed specifically for reusability. The first stage is equipped with nine Tianque-12A engines with thrust adjustable between 40% and 110%, and is designed for at least 20 reuses.

Learning from Failure: The Road to Success

The successful recovery did not come without setbacks. The Zhuque-3’s first flight on December 3, 2025, successfully inserted its second stage into orbit but failed during first-stage recovery when abnormal combustion occurred during the landing ignition sequence at 3.3 kilometers altitude, causing the booster to crash at the edge of the landing pad.

Zhuque-3 Program Commander Dai Zheng explained the failure in a CCTV interview: “At 3.3 km above the ground, we would do a sudden brake, which required ignition - called landing ignition. This time the ignition action was completed, the fire was lit. But after it ignited, abnormal combustion occurred, and it finally crashed at the edge of the landing pad.”

Despite the failure, Dai emphasized the value of the data collected: “It improved our understanding of the entire recovery process, including the flight environment, aerodynamic loads, and heating effects. The team obtained rare and valuable first-hand measured data.”

For the second flight, engineers simplified the landing propulsion scheme, reduced the number of ignition engines, upgraded the safety control strategy with predicted landing point safety control, and increased the second stage nozzle expansion ratio from 50 to 100 to improve carrying capacity. The Jimu News report detailed these technical improvements, noting that the second stage’s vacuum nozzle area expansion allows gas to expand more fully, improving the rocket’s overall carrying capacity.

The Economics of Reusability

The drive toward reusable rockets is fundamentally about cost reduction. A model development leader from the Xinhua article explained: “Generally speaking, liquid oxygen/methane fuel costs account for 1% to 3% of launch costs, and the first stage accounts for about 70% of the total rocket cost. The more times a rocket is reused, the lower the launch cost.”

Dai Zheng echoed this assessment: “If the reuse process goes smoothly, the final cost reduction space is very large. Even with 4-5 reuses, compared to a one-time use rocket, the cost reduction space is more than half.”

LandSpace founder and CEO Zhang Changwu has stated that the goal is to reduce launch costs to under 20,000 RMB per kilogram, a target that would make large-scale satellite deployment economically viable.

Supporting Massive Satellite Constellations

The timing of this breakthrough is significant. China is pursuing multiple low-orbit satellite internet constellations, including the state-backed Guowang constellation (planned ~13,000 satellites), the Shanghai-based Qianfan constellation (planned ~14,000+ satellites), and the Honghu-3 constellation proposed by Hongqing Technology (planned 10,000 satellites). Combined, these constellations plan to deploy over 27,000 low-orbit satellites.

These massive deployments require frequent, low-cost launches - exactly what reusable rockets are designed to provide. As People’s Daily reported on the Zhuque-3’s earlier 10km vertical takeoff and landing test, the program represents a key step toward “large-capacity, low-cost, high-frequency, reusable space launches.”

The 2026 Government Work Report for the first time specifically mentioned “accelerating the development of satellite internet” as national new infrastructure, underscoring the strategic importance of this capability.

What’s Next

LandSpace plans to conduct a re-flight of the recovered booster within 6 months, building a “launch-recover-inspect-reuse” closed-loop system. Dai Zheng acknowledged the challenges ahead: “After recovery, what standards must the rocket meet to fly again? Which products need to be replaced? Which products need replacement after how many flights? What inspections are needed to detect potential problems? This is actually a complete technical system.”

The National Space Administration has stated it will continue to promote the engineering application of reusable launch vehicles. China’s rapid progress in this field narrows the gap with SpaceX’s Falcon 9, which pioneered the landing-leg recovery approach. As China’s commercial space sector accelerates, the successful land recovery of the Zhuque-3 positions the nation to compete more effectively in the global space economy while supporting its ambitious satellite constellation plans.

With the first stage accounting for 70-80% of total rocket cost, the economics of reusability are compelling. The question now is how quickly LandSpace can transition from this historic first recovery to routine, reliable reuse - a challenge that will determine how rapidly China can deploy its planned satellite constellations and reshape the economics of space access.