Chinese startup LandSpace on Wednesday recovered the first stage of its Zhuque-3 rocket, joining SpaceX and Blue Origin as the only private companies to land an orbital-class booster and narrowing China's gap with the U.S. in reusable rockets.
The ability to return, recover and reuse a booster is crucial to reduce cost and make it easier to put satellites into orbit, turning space exploration into a commercially viable business similar to civil aviation.
The achievement came at LandSpace's second attempt to land the engine-packed first stage of the Zhuque-3, a stainless-steel rocket billed as China's answer to SpaceX's Falcon 9.
The 66.1 metre (216 ft) Zhuque-3 lifted off from the Dongfeng Commercial Space Innovation Pilot Zone in northwestern China, with the nine-engine first stage - or booster - returning to a landing site in the province of Gansu 390 kilometres (242 miles) southeast of the launch pad, state media reported.
The landing is likely to increase investor confidence as LandSpace pursues a listing on the Shanghai Stock Exchange's tech-focused STAR Market. LandSpace seeks to raise 7.5 billion yuan ($1.11 billion) through an initial public offering to support development and expand reusable launch services.
The firm submitted an updated IPO prospectus to the bourse in June in which it said it aimed to be profitable by 2029.
LandSpace said the Zhuque-3 is made of stainless steel which offers greater heat resistance and the prospect of reduced production costs compared with the Falcon 9's aluminium-lithium alloy body. It also runs on methane and liquid oxygen which can burn cleaner than the Falcon 9's liquid oxygen and kerosene mix.
The rocket can lift 14.2 metric tons to low Earth orbit on a one-way trip versus the Falcon 9's 22.8 tons, LandSpace said.
LandSpace aims for the Zhuque-3 booster to be reused up to 20 times. SpaceX launches the Falcon 9 around 150 times a year, or roughly three times a week, and reuses its booster dozens of times.
($1 = 6.7426 Chinese yuan renminbi) (Reporting by Shi Bu, Ethan Wang and Joe Cash; Editing by Tom Hogue and Christopher Cushing)
