China joins US in reusable rocket race with LandSpace success

Chinese private space company LandSpace has successfully recovered the first stage of its Zhuque-3 rocket after an orbital launch, landing the booster at a designated site in Gansu on August 19. It is China's first successful land-based recovery of an orbital-class rocket by a private company, following an earlier success in July where a rocket stage was recovered using a net on a sea platform. The achievement places China alongside the US in a club dominated by SpaceX.

Reusable rockets change the economics of spaceflight by allowing the most expensive parts of the launch vehicle to be recovered and flown again. A Nasa analysis of SpaceX's Falcon 9 found the average cost of a flight using a new booster was around $65 million, compared with about $50 million when a previously flown booster was used. Reusability also enables more frequent launches since recovered boosters can be prepared faster than building new ones from scratch.