Landspace Aims to Refly Recovered Zhuque-3 Booster Within Six Months

Chinese commercial launch firm Landspace plans to conduct a reflight test of its recovered Zhuque-3 first stage within six months, following the booster's successful vertical landing on August 18. The landing made Landspace the first Chinese company to recover a booster on land, and only the third entity worldwide to land an orbital-class booster on legs.

The touchdown followed the second flight of the Zhuque-3, which delivered the Honghu-03 satellite to orbit and returned the first stage to a recovery site in Minqin County, Gansu province, roughly 390 kilometers downrange from the Jiuquan launch site. It came eight and a half months after the rocket's debut flight, which reached orbit but ended in failure during the latter stages of powered descent when the first stage recovery was attempted.

A company representative told Chinese financial outlet STAR Market Daily that Landspace intends to refly the recovered stage within six months. The success placed Landspace behind only SpaceX and Blue Origin in landing an orbital-class booster on legs. It also followed China's first orbital booster recovery in July, when a state-owned Long March 10B was caught by a net-equipped vessel at sea.

Landspace made several technical changes after the failed landing attempt on the first Zhuque-3. The company reduced the number of engines used in the landing burn, which simplified the system and improved reliability. It added a predicted landing point to the onboard autonomous safety control system, and improved thermal protection to handle extreme reentry heating and structural loads.

The second Zhuque-3 flight also carried a secondary technology demonstration, China Mobile's Space-Based Intelligent Computing Payload 1.0, flown alongside the Honghu-03 satellite. Developed jointly with the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Institute of Computing Technology and Hongqing Technology, Landspace's satellite manufacturing affiliate, the payload runs a domestically sourced lightweight satellite-borne core network and onboard agent software. It represents China Mobile's first payload aimed at distributed edge computing in orbit, adding the company to a growing list of Chinese entities pursuing orbital computing infrastructure, including ADA Space's Three-Body constellation and Orbital Chenguang.

The reflight plan means significant work ahead for Landspace in validating its plans for sustained launch cadence. The company's own design target calls for a Zhuque-3 first stage to be reusable at least 20 times, with a long period expected before ramping up toward Falcon 9 rates.

Landspace is one of several Chinese launch entities pursuing reusable rocket capabilities, alongside CASC, Space Pioneer, Galactic Energy, Deep Blue Aerospace, Orienspace, CAS Space and iSpace. Newer companies such as Astronstone and Cosmoleap are also active in the field.

The next milestone will be the reflight test of the recovered Zhuque-3 first stage, which Landspace has said it aims to complete within six months of the August 18 landing.