Zhuque-3 Completes Second Flight with Successful First-Stage Landing

NASASpaceflight reports that on August eighteenth, LandSpace’s Zhuque‑3 lifted off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center and, after delivering its payload, achieved a soft landing of its first stage about three hundred ninety kilometers downrange. The sixty‑six‑meter, methalox rocket used nine Tianque‑12A engines producing roughly seven thousand two hundred kilonewtons of thrust, and touched down precisely on a landing pad with all four legs deployed. This marks Zhuque‑3 as the fourth orbital‑class booster to demonstrate partial reusability, joining SpaceX’s Falcon 9, Blue Origin’s New Glenn and China’s Chang Zheng 10B. The success adds LandSpace to the exclusive club of operators that have proven reusable orbital boosters.

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