Blue Origin · SpaceX · China · U.S. · Ars Technica
The floodgates are open after another Chinese firm lands a reusable rocket
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It has been a little more than a month since China recovered an orbital-class rocket booster for the first time.
Key facts
- The Zhuque-3, or ZQ-3, rocket lifted off from a commercial launch zone at China’s Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center at 7:35 pm EDT (23:35 UTC) Tuesday, about an hour after sunrise Wednesday
- 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
- Others include the Long March 12B backed by the Chinese government, the Pallas-1 from Galactic Energy, the Hyperbola-3 from iSpace, and Space Pioneer’s Tianlong-3, which failed on its first test
- It took 10 years for a second US launch company, Blue Origin, to propulsively land an orbital-class booster after SpaceX did it with the Falcon 9 rocket in 2015
Summary
It took 10 years for a second US launch company, Blue Origin, to propulsively land an orbital-class booster after SpaceX did it with the Falcon 9 rocket in 2015. A similar number of launch companies are working on reusable rockets in China. After years of development, these Chinese launch companies made their first attempts to land their new rocket boosters last December. Then, a third rocket, the Long March 10B from another CASC division, became the first to achieve a successful booster recovery July 10.