Zhuque-3 Completes Second Flight with Successful First-Stage Landing

Date:
Wed, 19 Aug 2026 03:23:54 +0000

Description:
Zhuque-3s second flight marked a major milestone for LandSpace as the
methalox rocket lifted off The post Zhuque-3 Completes Second Flight with Successful First-Stage Landing appeared first on NASASpaceFlight.com .

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Zhuque-3s second flight marked a major milestone for LandSpace as the
methalox rocket lifted off from Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center on August 18 and successfully soft-landed its first stage downrange after delivering its payload to orbit.

Building on the near-miss of its December 2025 debut, the 66-meter vehicle used its nine Tianque-12A engines for a clean ascent, stage separation, and precise recovery on landing legs roughly 390 km from the pad, joining Falcon 9, New Glenn, and Chang Zheng 10B as one of only four flight-proven orbital-class partially-reusable rockets.

Lifting off on August 18 at 23:35 UTC, roughly a third into its
37-minute-long window, Zhuque-3 cleared the tower at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in morning light approximately one hour after sunrise.

Under the power of its nine Tianque-12A first-stage engines producing 7,200 kilonewtons of thrust, the vehicle began pitching downrange. Development of the new rocket has followed a typical timeline for a brand-new vehicle. The maiden flight of Zhuque-3 took place in December 2025. On that mission, the vehicle successfully delivered a dummy payload to low Earth orbit, and the first stage came tantalizingly close to landing on its downrange pad.

An abnormal landing burn, however, caused the booster to impact the ground at high speed right next to the pad.

Had that attempt succeeded, Zhuque-3 would have become the first non-American orbital-class booster to land back on Earth.

That title was instead claimed by the Chang Zheng 10B, built by the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology, a subsidiary of the state-owned China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC). The Chang Zheng 10B features a kerolox booster that was caught at sea last month. Unlike the
Chang Zheng 10B, Zhuque-3 is designed to land Falcon 9-style, with landing legs on a pad rather than being caught. Standing 66 meters tall with a 4.5-meter diameter, the vehicle is slightly shorter but slightly fatter than SpaceXs Falcon 9. Beyond the landing legs, grid fins, and engine count, the similarities end.

The ascent produced the characteristic purple, magenta, and orange exhaust hues created by methane and oxygen combustion, first seen on the previous flight. Pieces appearing to fall away from the rocket were insulation
shedding as planned, a common practice on Chinese launch vehicles, in
contrast to spray-on foam used on vehicles such as SLS. Clear skies allowed ground observers to track the vehicle through Max Q, the period of maximum dynamic pressure. First and second-stage separation then set the booster up for atmospheric re-entry.

Zhuque-3s landing pad sits approximately 390 kilometers downrange. Despite
the land recovery, this is not a return-to-launch-site profile because the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center is located roughly 1,500 kilometers (1,000 miles) inland. The arrangement provides the payload-mass benefits of a downrange landing without the corrosion risks associated with seawater recovery.

LandSpace achieved a successful soft landing. After its flight to the edge of space and back, the booster touched down nearly at the center of the pad on a single Tianque-12 engine, with all four landing legs deployed, an improvement over the accuracy shown during the first flight. The achievement adds another organization to the small group of entities that have demonstrated partial reusability of orbital-class boosters. For a decade, that capability belonged solely to SpaceX; now multiple providers are succeeding every few months.

Chinas state-run CCTV confirmed that Zhuque-3s second stage successfully reached orbit. The exact nature of the payload remains undisclosed; it could have been another dummy payload or one or more operational satellites.
Further details are expected to be released later.

The success brings the number of flight-proven, orbital-class, partially reusable launch vehicles to four: Falcon 9 (first landing a decade ago), New Glenn (first landing in November 2025), Chang Zheng 10B (caught last month), and Zhuque-3. Additional vehicles under development worldwide are expected to join the list, while programs such as SpaceXs Starship and Stoke Spaces Nova continue work toward full reusability.

Many of the upcoming vehicles originate in China. Three notable examples, listed in no particular order, illustrate the rapid pace of development.

In many respects similar to Zhuque-3, the Chang Zheng 12A is a methalox
rocket of comparable height and diameter that also launches from Jiuquan with a downrange land landing pad. Its maiden flight occurred in December 2025 and also fell short of a successful landing, though the miss was farther from the target than Zhuque-3s first attempt. The vehicle is manufactured by the Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology (SAST), another CASC subsidiary,
in contrast to LandSpaces commercial status.

The 12A belongs to the wider Chang Zheng 12 family, which includes the 12 (kerolox, expendable), 12A (methalox, partially reusable), and 12B (kerolox, partially reusable), all of which have flown at least once. The next
scheduled launch is a 12A mission, currently no earlier than this month.

The Chang Zheng 10, 10A, and 10B variants are intended to play a central role in Chinas lunar program. The tri-core kerolox Chang Zheng 10 is designed to launch the Mengzhou crew spacecraft and, separately, the Lanyue lunar lander. The two spacecraft will rendezvous in lunar orbit, after which taikonauts
will transfer and Lanyue will descend to the surface. The kerolox Chang Zheng 10A is essentially a single-stick version of the Chang Zheng 10, with one engine on the upper stage instead of two. The center core remains common and is also shared with the 10B variant, whose booster was caught at sea last month.

The 10Bs upper stage uses methalox rather than kerolox. Discussion continues of a possible Chang Zheng 10C that would replace the common kerolox center core with a methalox booster, further increasing propellant diversity within the family.

Developed by the commercial company Space Pioneer, Tianlong-3 gained
notoriety after launching during a static-fire test in 2024. The vehicle has since flown intentionally, with an unsuccessful mission in April/June that appeared to fail near stage separation. That first intentional flight was not intended to attempt recovery; eventually the kerolox rocket is planned to
land like Falcon 9.

The current Zhuque-3 configuration is not intended to remain static.
LandSpace is developing the Zhuque-3E (E for evolution), following a path similar to upgrades previously applied to the smaller Zhuque-2.

The block upgrade will introduce new engines, Tianque-12B and Tianque-15B on the first and second stages, respectively, raise vehicle height from 65.9 to 76.2 meters, and increase lift-off mass by approximately 100 metric tonnes.

These changes are expected to raise downrange-recovery performance to 18.3 tonnes to low Earth orbit, closer to Falcon 9s advertised 17.5 tonnes. The present variant is limited to eight tonnes to LEO with downrange recovery. Beyond the vehicle upgrades, Zhuque-3 is reportedly under contract to launch the Haolong cargo spacecraft, a spaceplane designed to deliver and return cargo from the Tiangong Space Station.

Manufactured by the Chengdu Aircraft Design and Research Institute under the state-owned Aviation Industry Corporation of China, Haolong is intended to offer a lower-cost alternative to the expendable Tianzhou cargo vehicle currently serving the station.

With its second flight, LandSpace has demonstrated both orbital delivery and first-stage recovery, firmly establishing Zhuque-3 among the small group of partially reusable orbital launch vehicles now operating.

(Lead Image: CCTV).



The post Zhuque-3 Completes Second Flight with Successful First-Stage Landing appeared first on NASASpaceFlight.com .



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Link to news story: https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2026/08/zhuque-3-second-flight-successful-land ing/


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