SpaceX has successfully landed the first stage of its Falcon 9 rocket over the last decade. This allows SpaceX to use a single booster for multiple missions, reducing launch costs and increasing launch frequency.
Few other companies have made serious efforts to replicate SpaceX’s performance with a first-stage booster, although Blue Origin scored an initial success just last month when it landed the main stage of its New Glenn rocket on its second attempt after a failed attempt earlier this year.
New Zealand’s Rocket Lab is taking a different approach to booster recovery, developing a system that deploys parachutes on a descending booster to slow it before using a grappling hook to hold the parachute cord to a helicopter and then fly it back to land. The feat has not yet been achieved.
And now Chinese space company LandSpace is trying, although as you can see in the video below, the first attempt to land the main stage of its new Zhuque-3 rocket failed this week when the launch vehicle crashed into the ground at high speed.
The Zhuque-3 was on its first test flight in orbit from Jiuquan in northwest China, and while the rocket successfully reached orbit, the launch vehicle failed to land.
“After the first stage engine fired during the landing phase, an anomaly occurred that prevented a soft landing on the intended recovery platform,” LandSpace said in a widely reported statement. “The debris landed at the edge of the recovery area, causing the recovery test to fail.”
The team is currently conducting a thorough review of the incident and will make changes to the system before trying again.
While disappointing for LandSpace, mishaps are commonplace in space development. SpaceX suffered many missed landings with its Falcon 9 launcher before hitting the bullseye, and no doubt LandSpace will achieve the same feat in the foreseeable future.
On a much larger scale, SpaceX is also working on the landing process of its giant Starship rocket, which is still in the testing phase. In several of its test flights so far, the company has managed to bring Starship’s first stage Super Heavy booster home by attaching it directly above the ground with two large mechanical arms. If you’ve never seen it before, the impressive maneuver is definitely worth a look.
