A Chinese launch company, LandSpace, successfully recovered the first-stage booster of its Zhuque-3 rocket on Wednesday, marking the second successful landing of an orbital-class Chinese booster in just over a month. The achievement underlines the rapid pace at which China's commercial and state-backed space sector is developing reusable rocket technology, a capability that until this year only SpaceX and, more recently, Blue Origin had demonstrated among orbital-class vehicles.

The Zhuque-3 lifted off from Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center at 23:35 UTC on Tuesday, carrying a single satellite, before its stainless-steel first stage flew roughly 240 miles downrange and touched down on four extendable legs in a prepared landing zone in northwestern China. LandSpace, founded in 2015, called it the country's first successful landing-leg recovery and first booster recovery on land, following a failed attempt on the rocket's debut flight in December and a net-based sea recovery by a rival Long March 10B booster on 10 July. Engineers had modified the rocket's heat shield and switched to a single-engine landing burn after the earlier crash.