Zhuque-3 Y2 Launch: LandSpace Recovers China’s First Orbital Booster on Land

LandSpace’s Zhuque-3 Y2 completed two critical objectives on 19 August 2026: its upper stage placed the Honghu-03 satellite into its designated orbit, while the first stage returned to Earth and landed upright at a prepared site. The flight marked China’s first successful land-based controlled recovery of an orbital rocket’s first stage using deployable landing legs.

What happened during the launch

The rocket lifted off at 7:35 a.m. Beijing Time from the Dongfeng Commercial Space Innovation Pilot Zone in northwest China. About 137 seconds into the flight, the first and second stages separated. The second stage continued toward orbit and deployed Honghu-03, while the first stage began its controlled return.

During descent, the booster used powered braking and deployed its landing hardware before touching down vertically at the designated recovery area in Minqin County, Gansu Province. Reports place the landing site roughly 390 kilometers downrange from the launch area.

The result was a dual-success mission: an orbital payload delivery and a controlled first-stage recovery on land.

How Zhuque-3’s recovery differed from Long March-10B

The achievement came shortly after China’s 10 July recovery of a Long March-10B first stage. That vehicle returned to an offshore platform and was captured by a net-based system after separation.

Zhuque-3 demonstrated a different approach. Instead of relying on a recovery vessel and a net, LandSpace’s commercial launcher descended to solid ground under powered control and stood on deployable landing legs. The two missions therefore showed two distinct recovery concepts being pursued in China: sea-based capture and land-based vertical landing.

What Zhuque-3 is designed to do

Zhuque-3 is LandSpace’s reusable commercial orbital launch vehicle. Its intended value is not simply recovering a booster once; the broader goal is to reduce the amount of launch hardware discarded after each flight and support more frequent missions. Those capabilities could be important for deploying large low-Earth-orbit satellite constellations.

The vehicle is a single-core, two-stage rocket. Reported specifications for the flown configuration include a height of 66.1 meters, a 4.5-meter stage diameter and a 5.2-meter payload fairing.

Propulsion and structure

Both stages use liquid methane and liquid oxygen propellants, and the rocket’s primary structure is stainless steel. The vehicle’s tank arrangement places the methane tank above the liquid-oxygen tank, part of the design intended to accommodate its cryogenic propellant system and structural requirements.

The first stage is powered by nine Tianque-12A, or TQ-12A, methane-and-liquid-oxygen engines. Together, they provide more than 750 tonnes of liftoff thrust. The engine system is also intended to support the multiple restartable burns required for a reusable booster’s ascent, return and landing sequence.

Recovery hardware on the first stage includes landing legs and other systems used to control the vehicle during its return. The successful landing shows that the booster could survive an orbital-class flight and execute the necessary descent maneuver; it does not, by itself, establish how much refurbishment will be needed before another launch.

Why the landing matters

A first-stage landing is an essential step toward reusable launch operations, but it is not the same as proving rapid, economical reuse. Engineers must still assess the recovered hardware, determine its refurbishment needs and demonstrate that a flown stage can safely launch again.

Even with that qualification, Zhuque-3 Y2 represents a significant shift in China’s commercial launch effort. LandSpace has moved beyond a recovery attempt to a successful land-based recovery during an orbital mission, while also delivering a satellite to orbit. If subsequent inspections and reflights succeed, the technology could help support higher launch cadence and reduce the hardware cost associated with deploying future low-Earth-orbit satellite networks.