China's LandSpace Sticks Zhuque-3 Rocket Landing After Explosive First Attempt

LandSpace, a private rocket company based in Beijing, launched its Zhuque-3 rocket for the first time on Dec. 3, 2025, and the vehicle reached orbit successfully — a notable feat for any rocket's debut. The mission also attempted to land the rocket's first stage, the large lower section that provides most of a rocket's launch power and can fly itself back to Earth for reuse. That landing failed: the booster ran into problems during the final phase of its descent and exploded in a fireball near its planned landing pad.

China's state-run broadcaster CCTV released dramatic new footage of that failed landing attempt on Aug. 20, including video captured from a camera mounted on the booster itself. The footage shows the ground rushing up through the metal mesh of two hypersonic grid fins — flap-like attitude-control devices, pioneered and popularized by SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket, that Zhuque-3 also uses and closely resembles. The video reveals that the booster suffered a mini-explosion during its descent and was already a flaming wreck by the time it hit the ground.

LandSpace applied lessons from that failure to Zhuque-3's second mission, which launched on Aug. 18 and succeeded completely. The 216-foot-tall (66-meter) rocket delivered a satellite to orbit, and this time its first stage stuck the landing.

The touchdown was the first-ever by a private Chinese orbital rocket, and only the second by a Chinese orbital launcher of any kind. The first was achieved on July 10 by the first stage of a Long March 10B rocket, which landed softly on a net-like apparatus installed on a ship at sea.