Major breakthrough! China achieves its first land-based rocket recovery: Zhuque-3 chief commander says it's like parallel parking at high speed.

Today, the Zhuque-3 Y2 carrier rocket lifted off from the Dongfeng Commercial Aerospace Innovation Test Area. The rocket's first stage followed the predetermined flight program throughout, ultimately achieving a smooth vertical landing at the Zhuque-3 dedicated landing pad in Minqin County, Gansu Province, marking the complete success of the entire mission.

This represents another milestone breakthrough in China's key reusable rocket technologies. The Zhuque-3 has officially become the country's first launch vehicle to successfully reach orbit and achieve precise land recovery, filling a core technological gap in the domestic commercial aerospace sector.

Witnessing the dozens-of-meters-tall rocket land vertically and steadily in person, many on-site staff members were moved to tears on the spot.

In a post-mission interview, the Zhuque-3 project commander remarked that the difficulty of the entire recovery process was akin to having a multi-ton high-speed vehicle perform a precision parking maneuver at several times the speed of sound—any parameter deviation at any stage could have rendered all prior R&D efforts futile.

After evaluation, industry authoritative experts concluded that the complete technical route validated by Zhuque-3 this time—liquid oxygen methane propellant plus stainless steel rocket body structure plus vertical recovery—exceeded expectations in all core aspects. This is expected to directly accelerate the constellation deployment pace of China's low-orbit mega-constellations, with overall deployment costs dropping to levels far below those of traditional launch modes.

According to official statements from LandSpace, the team will promptly conduct full-process inspection and verification of the recovered rocket stage, aiming to arrange a second reuse mission as soon as possible. They will accelerate the establishment of a complete closed-loop system encompassing launch, recovery, inspection, and reuse, laying a solid foundation for future high-frequency, low-cost commercial operations.

Many industry observers have also offered rational assessments. Although Zhuque-3's development pace in recent years has far exceeded industry projections, when benchmarked against SpaceX's mature reusable rocket products that have already achieved scaled reuse, there remains a notable gap in multiple dimensions, including stage reuse frequency, annual launch cadence, and overall mission reliability. The commercial aerospace sector will need to proceed steadily, continuing to achieve more technological iterations and breakthroughs.

The complete success of Zhuque-3's recovery mission has also shattered the prejudice previously held by many overseas technical institutions that China could not develop reusable liquid oxygen methane rockets. The entire technical route, from underlying principles to manufacturing processes, was independently completed by domestic teams. The subsequent comprehensive adoption of these technologies will inevitably elevate China's overall competitiveness in commercial aerospace to the global first tier.