LandSpace, China’s leading commercial rocket company, has achieved a global first by retrieving a stainless steel rocket booster after an orbital launch, in a major step forward for Beijing's efforts to develop reusable and cost-effective rockets.

The 66-meter-long “Chutian-3” rocket, which operates on methane and liquid oxygen, was launched at 05:35 am on Wednesday from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the Gobi Desert. It successfully delivered the Honghu-3 Internet satellite to its intended orbit before its first stage returned and landed vertically in Gansu Province, about 390 kilometers away from the launch platform.

Previously used reusable boosters for this type of launch were made of aluminum alloys, which are more expensive in terms of design and raw materials. The Space X Super Heavy booster, also made of stainless steel, is still awaiting approval from the US Federal Aviation Administration for its first recovery flight.

With this landing, LandSpace became the fourth entity worldwide to recover a launch vehicle, after American companies SpaceX and Blue Origin, and China’s state-owned China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation. It also made China the first country to successfully retrieve orbital launch vehicles using two distinct technical approaches, a dual strategy that the United States itself has not yet implemented despite its leadership in this field.

Second attempt

Success came in the second attempt; during the first flight last December, the second stage reached orbit successfully, but the first stage turned into a ball of fire during its final powered descent toward the launch pad. The project head explained to state television at the time that recovery failed because the first stage engine did not reignite about three kilometers above ground as planned.

The company announced that in the second flight, it made several improvements based on data from the first flight, including simplifying the landing propulsion system by reducing the number of engines used for the landing burn to increase reliability, introducing an automatic flight termination system with a function to predict the impact point, and redesigning thermal protection systems to withstand the harsh mechanical and thermal loads during the return and entry phase.

It is worth noting that in its non-reusable configuration, the rocket can carry about 21 metric tons to low Earth orbit, dropping to about 18 tons if the first stage is recovered. This capability is pivotal for deploying China’s two satellite networks, “Gou Wang” and “Jianwang”, each of which plans to launch more than 10,000 artificial satellites for global broadband communications.

The company intends to reuse one of the recovered boosters in the next six months, a move it says will establish high-frequency, low-cost commercial launches.