China’s LandSpace lands reusable rocket booster, closing the gap with SpaceX

China has crossed one of the biggest remaining barriers in reusable rocketry.

Chinese space startup LandSpace successfully landed the first stage of its Zhuque-3 rocket on Wednesday after sending a satellite into orbit, marking China’s first successful land recovery of an orbital-class booster using landing legs.

The August 19 flight puts LandSpace in a small club of commercial rocket companies that have demonstrated vertical booster recovery and gives China’s private space industry a major technical win in its race to build reusable launch vehicles.

Video from the flight shows Zhuque-3 climbing from the Dongfeng Commercial Space Innovation Pilot Zone before its stages separated roughly 137 seconds after liftoff. The second stage continued to orbit, carrying Hongqing Technology’s Honghu 03 satellite, as the first stage began its return to Earth.

Minutes later, the booster descended over the desert and fired its engines before touching down vertically at LandSpace Landing Site #1 in Minqin County, Gansu Province, kicking up a cloud of dust around the landing pad.

LandSpace called the flight a full success.

“On August 19, 2026, at 07:35 (UTC+8), the ZhuQue-3 (ZQ-3) Y2 reusable launch vehicle lifted off from the Dongfeng Commercial Space Innovation Pilot Zone. Approximately 137 seconds after lift-off, the first and second stages separated. The second stage continued its flight and successfully delivered the Honghu 03 satellite, independently developed by Hongqing Technology, into its designated orbit. At approximately 07:41, the first stage performed a successful soft touchdown at the LandSpace Landing Site#1 in Minqin County, Gansu Province, following the planned trajectory — marking the full success of the flight test mission,” the company said in a post on X.

MISSION SUCCESS | ZhuQue-3 Y2 Reusable Launch Vehicle Achieved Full Success in Orbital Insertion and First-Stage Recovery

On August 19, 2026, at 07:35 (UTC+8), the ZhuQue-3 (ZQ-3) Y2 reusable launch vehicle lifted off from the Dongfeng Commercial Space Innovation Pilot Zone.… pic.twitter.com/fshijOxgtc

— LandSpace (@LandSpace_Tech) August 19, 2026

The landing validated several pieces of the recovery sequence, including reentry, controlled descent and a final landing burn. Getting those pieces to work together is one of the hardest engineering problems in reusable launch systems.

LandSpace’s second major methane rocket milestone

For LandSpace, Wednesday’s landing builds on a breakthrough that put the company on the global space industry’s radar three years ago.

In July 2023, LandSpace’s Zhuque-2 became the first methane-fueled rocket to successfully reach orbit, beating competing methane rocket programs from SpaceX and Relativity Space to that milestone. TechStartups covered the achievement at the time.

That history makes the Zhuque-3 landing more significant than a single successful test.

Founded in 2015 and headquartered in Beijing, LandSpace has spent years betting on liquid oxygen and methane engines. Methane has emerged as a favored propellant for a new generation of launch vehicles, partly from its cleaner combustion characteristics and suitability for engines intended to fly multiple times.

SpaceX uses methane in Starship’s Raptor engines. Blue Origin’s New Glenn uses methane-fueled BE-4 engines on its first stage, and Rocket Lab’s upcoming Neutron is being developed around methane propulsion.

LandSpace is now trying to combine that fuel strategy with reusable hardware.

The benchmark remains SpaceX. Falcon 9 boosters have accumulated years of operational flights, landings and reflights, turning booster recovery from an experimental feat into a routine part of the company’s launch business. One successful landing does not put LandSpace on equal footing.

It does show the technical gap is shrinking.

China opened more of its space industry to private investment over the past decade, spawning a group of commercial rocket startups seeking a place alongside the country’s state-backed launch programs. Reusability could become increasingly important as China builds satellite constellations and commercial operators compete for launch contracts.

LandSpace still has to prove Zhuque-3 can repeat Wednesday’s performance and, more importantly, refurbish and fly recovered stages again. A reusable rocket earns its economic advantage through repetition, not a single landing.

Still, the flight’s symbolism is hard to miss.

Three years after LandSpace beat its American competitors to orbit with a methane-fueled rocket, a Zhuque booster has now returned from flight and landed standing upright in the Gansu desert.

The reusable rocket race has another serious contender.

LandSpace (Credit: LandSpace)