China marches towards re-usable rockets with successful first-stage landing
Chinese space startup LandSpace has landed a first-stage booster on land, the first time a Middle Kingdom company has achieved the feat.
LandSpace flies rockets called Zhuque and has built three generations of the craft.
Zhuque-1 only flew once, in 2018. Zhuque-2 became the first liquid oxygen-methane vehicle to reach orbit when it first flew in 2022. It can can carry 6,000 kilograms to a 200km low Earth orbit or 4,000kg to a 600km Sun-synchronous orbit. LandSpace has flown it eight times since 2022. Six missions succeeded.
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Zhuque-3 is the company’s new flagship and can hoist 21,300 kg to a 450km orbit. The rocket uses LandSpace’s own TQ-12A engines, which burn liquid oxygen-methane fuel. The rocket’s first stage is re-usable, and can land on its four legs.
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LandSpace flew the Zhuque-3 for the first time last December, but the mission failed – although its on-board Ethernet performed brilliantly.
The company did better yesterday, when a Zhuque-3 sent a satellite into orbit and managed to land its first stage. You can see a video of the landing on the company’s Weixin account.
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The company says the rocket lifted off at 7:35 AM yesterday, split its first and second stages 137 seconds into the flight, and landed the first stage at 7:41 AM. The launchpad and landing site are about 250km apart.
LandSpace's Zhuque-3 first stage lands in northern China
LandSpace says the rocket performed a high-altitude return attitude adjustment, reentry ignition powered deceleration, aerodynamic gliding control, landing ignition deceleration, and deployed its landing legs. “The mission systematically verified the entire process of the first stage returning to the land landing pad from high-speed flight,” the company trumpeted.
Re-usable rockets reduce the cost of space flight by removing the need to build a vehicle for every launch. LandSpace has designed its engines and first stages to fly up to 20 times.
It hasn’t proven it can re-use a rocket even once, yet, or how quickly it can get a used vehicle back on the launchpad. Just landing a first stage is, however, mightily impressive as only SpaceX and Blue Origin have previously achieved the feat.
China has big ambitions in space, including huge constellations of broadband satellites, extending its space station, and building a moon base. Beijing knows re-usable rockets will help – it recently tested catching them in a net mounted on a barge at sea. State media has hailed LandSpace’s feat as a “major breakthrough” and reported that China’s National Space Agency is working on other re-usable tech to advance the nation’s ability to launch more stuff, more often, at lower cost. ®
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