LandSpace lands its Zhuque-3 booster as SpaceX completes mission 100
LandSpace successfully recovered an orbital rocket booster on its legs for the first time in China, while SpaceX reached a new milestone by completing 100 launches this year.
Science··Midday
The Zhuque-3 stage landed on its legs, a first for Chinese orbital rockets
Chinese commercial space enterprise LandSpace recovered the first stage of its Zhuque-3 orbital rocket after a specialized test flight, bringing the vehicle back to land vertically on its legs. The operation establishes the first successful leg-assisted landing for an orbital-class launch vehicle designed and built in China. Engineers at the company plan to use the gathered telemetry and structural data to advance the design toward supporting repeated, high-frequency flights without extensive refurbishment.[1]
The Vandenberg flight made SpaceX's 100th mission of the year
Meanwhile, SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California to deploy a new functional group of Starlink communication satellites into low Earth orbit. The launch marked the company reaching 100 completed missions for the calendar year, extending its significant lead in global launch volume. The company relies entirely on its established practice of returning boosters to autonomous droneships and landing zones to maintain this unprecedented frequent schedule.[2]
Reuse sets the price bar of the launch market
The fundamental capability to return and fly launch hardware multiple times steadily lowers the baseline operational cost of reaching orbit. SpaceX uses its highly active reusable fleet to continuously expand its Starlink broadband network while also deploying external commercial and government payloads. LandSpace plans to integrate its newly recovered flight dynamics data to establish a similar reusable launch framework, targeting the same long-term economic advantages for its own future orbital missions.[1], [2]
