China lands rocket booster upright for first time, closing gap with SpaceX

China has successfully recovered a rocket's first-stage booster, bringing the country a step closer to mastering the key technology that American companies such as SpaceX and Blue Origin have used to dominate the reusable rocket race.

According to China's state-run Xinhua News Agency, the Zhuque-3 Yao-2 launch vehicle lifted off Wednesday from the Dongfeng Commercial Space Innovation Test Zone in Jiuquan, Gansu Province. The rocket's second stage successfully entered its planned orbit, while the separated first-stage booster completed a vertical landing on the ground following pre-set procedures.

It marked the first time China had recovered a reusable launch vehicle's first-stage booster using landing legs for a ground-based vertical landing.

"China's reusable rocket technology has achieved a major breakthrough," Xinhua said.

The Zhuque-3 is a liquid oxygen-methane reusable rocket developed by Landspace, a Chinese private space company. It stands 66.1 meters tall, with a first- and second-stage body diameter of 4.5 meters and a fairing diameter of 5.2 meters. Its engines can throttle between 40 and 110 percent of thrust. The rocket is designed to place satellites into orbit and then land its first-stage booster vertically for reuse.

Reusable rockets are expected to significantly cut the cost of building low-Earth orbit satellite networks, including satellite internet constellations. The rocket's chief developer told Xinhua that liquid oxygen-methane fuel typically accounts for just 1 to 3 percent of total launch costs, while the first-stage booster represents about 70 percent. "The more times a rocket is reused, the lower the launch cost becomes," the developer said.

China had earlier recovered the first-stage booster of a Long March-10B launch vehicle in July using a net-based capture system mounted on a maritime recovery platform. Wednesday's mission took a different approach, bringing the booster back to land via a vertical, legs-first touchdown. Landspace said it plans to refurbish and refly the recovered booster and establish an operational cycle of launch, recovery, inspection and reuse. China has yet to relaunch a recovered booster, however. The China National Space Administration also said it will continue pushing to commercialize reusable launch vehicles to build greater heavy-lift capacity and enable low-cost, high-frequency space transportation.