China has achieved its first successful land recovery of a rocket, and Landspace has passed the "second major test"

Landspace is facing another major test for its Zhuque-3 rocket.

According to CCTV News, on August 19, the Zhuque-3 Y2 carrier rocket lifted off from the Dongfeng Commercial Space Innovation Test Zone, and its first stage successfully landed at the Zhuque-3 landing pad in Minqin County, Gansu Province in accordance with the pre-set procedures.

This marks another major breakthrough China has made in key technologies for reusable carrier rockets. The Zhuque-3 has completed the first-ever vertical recovery via landing legs and land recovery of an orbital-class carrier rocket first stage in China, and systematically verified the engineering feasibility of the technical route of "liquid oxygen methane propellant + stainless steel rocket body structure + vertical recovery with landing legs".

This is the second answer sheet Landspace has handed in in less than a year following the maiden flight of the Zhuque-3 Y1 in December 2025, and it is also the "second major test" that this private rocket company must pass on its way to large-scale and normalized commercial launch operations.

This milestone also has another layer of significance for Landspace.

At present, Landspace is in the inquiry phase of its STAR Market IPO. Over the past period, the maturity of the Zhuque-3's reusable technology, its engineering progress, and whether it can form stable commercial launch capabilities in the future have always been the focus of public attention. The successful completion of orbital insertion and recovery of the Y2 mission provides a new engineering verification sample, bringing the Zhuque-3 one step closer to normalized commercial operations.

01 The final "braking" step, Landspace redesigned the whole process

From Y1 to Y2, Landspace focused its improvements on the final phase of first-stage recovery.

On December 3, 2025, the Zhuque-3 Y1 completed its maiden flight. During that mission, the second stage successfully entered the predetermined orbit, but an anomaly occurred in the first stage at the final phase of recovery, and it ultimately failed to achieve soft landing at the recovery pad.

According to the information Landspace previously disclosed for the maiden flight, the Y1 basically met expectations in links including reentry ignition, aerodynamic gliding and return guidance, and the problem finally occurred at the last landing ignition stage. The Y1 had already run through most of the first-stage return process, and the last few kilometers became the key problem that Landspace needed to solve. Therefore, the Y2 mission focused on adjusting and optimizing the power scheme during the landing phase.

Compared with Y1, the Zhuque-3 Y2 has no obvious changes in overall configuration and appearance, and still adopts the two-stage tandem structure with a stainless steel rocket body.

The Zhuque-3 Y2 has carried out engineering upgrades mainly around the reliability of first-stage recovery, engine performance and constellation launch capacity:

Aiming at the first-stage recovery mission, Landspace optimized the landing power scheme. By reducing the number of landing ignition engines, it further simplified the system design, lowered system complexity and control difficulty, and improved flight reliability during the recovery phase.

Safety control during the first-stage return process has also been adjusted. The Y2 mission added a predicted landing point safety control function, which allows the rocket to independently calculate the possible landing point based on real-time flight status and implement safety control accordingly. At the same time, in response to the flight environment faced by the first stage during reentry, Landspace further improved the rocket's safety and autonomous control capability during recovery flight.

In addition to first-stage recovery, the second-stage engine of the Y2 mission has also been optimized. This mission adopts a nozzle design with a larger expansion ratio to improve engine performance and rocket carrying capacity, and accumulate engineering experience for subsequent low-orbit constellation networking missions.

Focusing on future constellation launch requirements, the Y2 mission also carries a non-pyrotechnic stacking, pressing and releasing device independently developed by Landspace. The device adopts the design of "combined body pressing + inter-satellite sequential electric control unlocking", which is used to reduce the separation shock during multi-satellite stacking launch, improve the reliability of rocket-satellite connection and inter-satellite separation, and prepare for subsequent missions such as one-rocket multi-satellite launch and rapid constellation deployment.

During this flight, Landspace also installed 12 aerospace-adapted consumer-grade action cameras on the rocket body to continuously record the whole process of rocket launch, return and recovery. Targeting environments such as high vibration, high overload, high heat flow and strong shock, the team adapted the equipment in aspects including vibration reduction, heat protection, structural strengthening, as well as power supply and data reliability, and completed verification through ground tests.

From Y1 to Y2, the mission content of the Zhuque-3 is also moving forward continuously.

According to the official statement, the successful recovery of the first stage means the Zhuque-3 has completed another full engineering verification, and accumulated new data for subsequent reflight and normalized launch operations.

02 The "recovery competition" for Chinese rockets, the game point has changed

On July 10, 2026, the Long March 10B lifted off from the Hainan Commercial Space Launch Site. After the first stage returned, it completed recovery via the net capture method on the offshore recovery platform. This is China's first successful implementation of controlled recovery of a carrier rocket first stage, and also the world's first net-type recovery of a carrier rocket.

The success of the Zhuque-3 Y2, on the other hand, completes an important breakthrough on another technical route, marking the first-ever vertical recovery via landing legs and land recovery of an orbital-class carrier rocket in China.

Behind the two schemes are different engineering choices.

The two schemes differ in the division of labor between the rocket and the ground system. The Long March 10B adopts offshore net-type recovery, the first stage is not equipped with landing legs. After returning, the net system of the offshore recovery platform completes the capture, and absorbs the shock and stabilizes the rocket body through mechanisms such as buffering and fixing. Therefore, the recovery platform itself undertakes more capture and buffering functions.

The Zhuque-3 adopts vertical recovery with landing legs. The first stage is equipped with grid fins, attitude control system and landing legs, and completes landing through engine deceleration and attitude control. The supporting Minqin recovery field here mainly undertakes functions such as the landing pad, measurement and control communication, as well as hoisting, transportation and post-processing after the rocket lands. According to the information disclosed by Landspace, due to its strong adaptability to the rocket landing attitude control accuracy, low requirements for the recovery landing site, and small investment in recovery field construction, the area of the Minqin recovery pad is 60 meters × 60 meters.

Over the past year, the verification speed of China's reusable rockets has increased significantly.

Since the end of 2025, domestic reusable rockets have clearly entered a phase of intensive verification and maiden flight. The Zhuque-3 and Long March 12A have successively carried out orbital-level recovery tests; entering 2026, the Long March 10B completed first-stage recovery, and the Zhuque-3 continued to advance the Y2 mission. At the same time, a number of commercial aerospace companies are also advancing new recovery verifications, including Galactic Energy's Pallas-1, i-Space's Hyperbola-3, and CAS Space's Lihong-2.

The industry's assessment criteria have therefore moved a step forward.

The truly distinguishing indicators in the next phase will be more focused on: how many times a rocket can fly, how long the interval between two flights is, how many launches can be carried out each year, and how much each kilogram of payload will eventually cost.

Successful recovery only solves the first threshold among them.

03 After being able to land, it is also necessary to make the business financially viable

The successful recovery of the Zhuque-3 Y2 has another more important meaning for Landspace.

At present, Landspace is in the promotion phase of its STAR Market IPO. Information disclosed by the Shanghai Stock Exchange shows that its IPO application was accepted on December 31, 2025, and the current review status is "inquired". The company plans to raise 7.5 billion yuan of funds.

At this point in time, the Zhuque-3 Y2 completed commercial payload orbital insertion and first-stage recovery, which fills an important engineering verification gap for Landspace.

In the past few years, almost all of Landspace's key progress has been centered on the technical route of liquid oxygen methane propellant and reusability.

In 2023, the Zhuque-2 became the world's first liquid oxygen methane rocket to successfully enter orbit, and then began to perform commercial satellite launch missions. In 2025, the Zhuque-3 Y1 completed its maiden flight, sending this large reusable liquid oxygen methane rocket into orbit for the first time. By August 19, 2026, the Y2 mission successfully sent the Honghu-03 satellite into the predetermined orbit, and completed the vertical recovery of the first stage at the same time.

For Landspace, this means that the Zhuque-3 has completed the key engineering verification from orbital flight to first-stage recovery, and the technical route the company previously proposed for reusable rockets now has more complete flight data support.

However, after the successful recovery, the issues that the market pays attention to will continue to extend forward.

According to public data, in traditional disposable liquid carrier rockets, propellant costs usually only account for about 1% to 3% of the total launch cost, while the cost of the first stage may account for about 70% of the cost of the entire rocket.

A first-stage rocket with the highest value is directly scrapped after one flight, which is naturally very expensive. If the first stage can fly 10 times, 20 times or even more, the manufacturing cost can be continuously diluted.

But the real commercial model is far more complex.

In order to complete the first-stage return and recovery, the rocket needs to carry additional return propellant, and add equipment such as grid fins, landing legs and attitude control systems; after completing one recovery, how long the engine needs to be inspected, which parts need to be replaced, and whether the rocket body needs to be re-tested, will directly determine the cost and cycle of the next launch.

Therefore, the number of recoveries and the number of reflights are two completely different sets of data: the former focuses on counting how many first stages have been successfully brought back; while reflight focuses on how many of these recovered first stages have actually performed launch missions again.

Taking SpaceX as an example, as of July this year, a Falcon 9 first-stage booster has completed its 36th flight, continuously refreshing the reuse record for orbital-class rockets. What really sets it apart is that this reuse capability has finally been converted into a stable launch frequency.

Since 2026, a large number of Falcon 9 missions of SpaceX have been serving its own Starlink constellation. According to Reuters statistics, as of early August 2026, Starlink has accounted for about 79% of Falcon 9 launch missions.

According to the plan currently disclosed by Landspace, the company will try its first recovery and reuse flight as soon as possible based on the recovery test results. If this plan is finally realized, the Zhuque-3 will truly start to enter the complete cycle of "launch - recovery - inspection - maintenance - reflight".

That will be a more difficult test than landing.

All in all, the successful launch of the Zhuque-3 Y2 has pushed Landspace to this stage. The Y2 mission has helped Landspace pass its second major test. The next test is to make the rocket that has come back once, fly again.

This article is from the WeChat official account "Tencent Tech", author: Li Hailun, editor: Xu Qingyang, published with authorization from 36Kr.