China achieved its first rocket land recovery on Wednesday, with LandSpace becoming the first Chinese commercial space company to master rocket recovery technology.
According to CCTV News, the Zhuque-3 Yao-2 carrier rocket was launched from the Dongfeng Commercial Aerospace Innovation Experimental Zone on Wednesday, and the rocket’s first stage successfully landed as planned at the Zhuque-3 Landing Field in Minqin County, Gansu Province.
This report states that this is yet another significant breakthrough for China in the key technology of reusable rockets. Zhuque-3 has become China’s first carrier rocket to successfully enter orbit and achieve land-based recovery.
This successful launch also means that LandSpace, which is currently under IPO review, has become the first Chinese commercial aerospace company to master rocket recovery technology.
With this accomplishment, LandSpace joins SpaceX and Blue Origin (founded by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos), becoming the only three private rocket developers worldwide that have successfully recovered large rocket boosters that have flown into space and plan to reuse them.
Earlier, Yicai cited sources saying that the Zhuque-3 Yao-2 carrier rocket's originally scheduled launch last Tuesday was postponed. The day before (August 10), China’s Long March 7A carrier rocket failed in a launch from Wenchang, Hainan.
This was the first failure for this rocket model since March 2020, after six years. The model had achieved 16 consecutive successes previously, including the launch of Communication Technology Test Satellite 26A on June 23 this year and the launch of Tianlian-3 01 satellite on July 29. This was also China’s fourth orbital launch failure this year.