China's Zhuque-3 Booster Landed Upright, Then Toppled in a Post-Landing Fire

On 19 August, Chinese company LandSpace appeared to have achieved a milestone for the country's commercial launch industry: a 66-metre stainless-steel orbital rocket booster standing upright on four legs in the Gobi Desert. The Zhuque-3 Y2 rocket lifted off at 7:35 a.m. Beijing time from the Dongfeng commercial space innovation zone near Jiuquan, carrying the Honghu-03 satellite, a prototype low-Earth-orbit communications satellite built by Hongqing Technology, a company associated with LandSpace.

The rocket's second stage delivered the satellite to orbit as planned. The reusable first stage separated about 137 seconds after launch, then used grid fins and attitude-control thrusters to steer itself roughly 390 kilometres downrange to a prepared landing pad in Minqin County, Gansu Province. There, it deployed four landing legs and relit its engines for a controlled, upright touchdown around 7:41 to 7:43 a.m., according to Chinese reports — China's first land recovery of an orbital-class first stage using deployable legs. LandSpace's own announcement, carried by People's Daily, called the flight and recovery a complete success.

The story did not end there. Video from the recovery site later showed fire around the booster's base, with the stage leaning as its support appeared to weaken; the booster was eventually seen lying on its side. The specialist publication China in Space, analyzing the available imagery, concluded that the legs and their attachment pistons appeared to weaken before the stage fell, and reported that satellite imagery showed the booster still standing at least four hours after touchdown. LandSpace had not released a detailed account of the post-landing sequence or its root cause at the time of reporting.

The flight follows LandSpace's first Zhuque-3 launch in December 2025, when the first stage suffered abnormal combustion during its landing attempt and broke apart near the recovery pad instead of touching down. For the second flight, the company said it reduced the number of engines used during landing ignition, simplified the propulsion plan, revised its return-control strategy, and added more autonomous handling of the predicted touchdown point.