LandSpaces Zhuque-3 topples following milestone landing

Date:
Sun, 23 Aug 2026 18:57:05 +0000

Description:
LandSpace achieved a major milestone for Chinese commercial rocketry this
week when the first stage The post LandSpaces Zhuque-3 topples following milestone landing appeared first on NASASpaceFlight.com .

FULL STORY ======================================================================

LandSpace achieved a major milestone for Chinese commercial rocketry this
week when the first stage of its Zhuque-3 successfully soft-landed on a recovery pad in the Gobi Desert following its second orbital flight.

However, the booster later tipped over after a post-landing fire compromised one of its legs, underscoring that propulsive recovery is only the first step toward operational reusability. The company had initially wanted to refly the booster.

As previously reported by NASASpaceflight, the Zhuque-3 Y2 lifted off from the Dongfeng Commercial Space Innovation Pilot Zone at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center on August 18, 2026 (23:35 UTC) .

Powered by nine Tianque-12A methalox engines, the 66-meter stainless-steel vehicle successfully deployed the Honghu-03 communications satellite
prototype into low Earth orbit.

After stage separation just over two minutes into flight, the booster performed a three-engine re-entry burn near 80 km altitude, used four grid fins for atmospheric guidance, and executed a landing burn beginning several kilometers above the ground.

The four landing legs deployed in the final tens of meters, and the stage touched down near the center of the pad roughly 390 km downrange in Minqin County, Gansu Province. This marked Chinas first successful land-based recovery of an orbital-class booster using landing legs and only the second Chinese orbital booster recovery overall, following the Chang Zheng 10Bs net catch at sea in July.

Zhuque-3 joins Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy, New Glenn, and Chang Zheng 10B as one of the few orbital-class vehicles to demonstrate first-stage recovery. It is the second such vehicle (after Falcon 9 and New Glenn) to achieve a
propulsive landing on solid ground. The graph has hockey-sticked.

Reusability is not a fad.

The number of organizations to land an orbital-class rocket booster has quadrupled in the past 8 months. pic.twitter.com/BU3BMSg3uU

Ryan Caton (@dpoddolphinpro) August 20, 2026



The success was built directly on lessons from the December 2025 maiden flight, which reached orbit but suffered an anomalous combustion during the landing burn, causing a high-speed impact near the pad.

For Y2, LandSpace reduced the number of engines used during the landing burn to improve reliability, enhance thermal protection, and add predictive landing-point capability to the autonomous safety system.

Video and social media imagery from the recovery site show the booster standing upright on its four legs immediately after touchdown. Residual
liquid methane and liquid oxygen then ignited near the base, producing a fire that damaged or weakened one of the (reportedly carbon-fiber composite) landing legs. The leg failed, and the stainless-steel stage toppled over. No official detailed statement from LandSpace on the tip-over had been released at the time of writing, but the visual evidence is clear.

The company had previously indicated plans to attempt reflight of a recovered booster within about six months. That timeline is now far less likely for
this specific vehicle, though the core challenge, controlled propulsive landing from orbital velocity, has been solved.

Strengthening landing legs and improving post-landing propellant management and fire suppression are comparatively more straightforward engineering
tasks.

The sequence closely mirrors an incident involving SpaceXs Falcon 9 booster B1086. On March 2, 2025, during a Starlink mission, B1086 successfully landed on the droneship *Just Read the Instructions*.

An off-nominal fire in the aft section then damaged one landing leg, causing the booster to tip over and be lost roughly 48 seconds after touchdown.
Falcon 9 B1086 returns to Florida in a non-optimal condition, following a post-landing fire on the droneship.

Footage from https://t.co/icguJj64A8 pic.twitter.com/wqDgvuGJ4O

Gav | spaceOFFSHORE (@spaceOFFSHORE) March 5, 2025



Both events highlight a vulnerability inherent to leg-based landings:
residual propellants, thermal conditions, and structural loads after a high-energy return can still compromise the vehicle even after a successful touchdown. However, SpaceX has enjoyed countless successes with Falcon 9.

Approaches that eliminate landing legs, such as Starships mechanical
chopstick tower catches or similar tower/net systems under development, sidestep this particular failure mode by transferring support loads to ground infrastructure rather than vehicle-mounted deployable structures.



Cosmoleap, for example, is targeting a Starship-style catch tower for its Yueqian-1.

Zhuque-3 is one of several partially reusable Chinese vehicles in development or flight test. The stainless-steel methalox design is similar in scale to Falcon 9 (slightly shorter at 66 m but wider at 4.5 m diameter) and currently offers roughly half the payload capacity to LEO (around 8 tonnes in reusable configuration).

An upgraded Zhuque-3E with enhanced engines, a longer fairing, and roughly doubled payload is planned.

LandSpace previously flew the worlds first orbital methalox rocket with Zhuque-2 in 2023. The Zhuque-3 landing, even with the subsequent tip-over, advances the company from technology demonstration toward operational reusability.

With booster recovery key to lowering launch costs, Chinas commercial and state programs are entering a new phase of rapid iteration on return and
reuse technologies. Further flights of Zhuque-3 and its contemporaries will show how quickly these systems mature.



The post LandSpaces Zhuque-3 topples following milestone landing appeared first on NASASpaceFlight.com .



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Link to news story: https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2026/08/landspaces-zhuque-3-topples/


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