China has gained pace in the space race by recovering rockets – but can it relaunch one?

As technological developments augur an era of renewed space exploration, China is aiming to become a major player. In the second part of this two-part series, Wency Chen and Ben Jiang examine the country’s strategy and progress on reusable rockets – a field where the US has a tremendous lead.

US commercial space firm SpaceX has been eager to tout its deployment of reusable first-stage rocket boosters, claiming to have flown more than 600 missions with the cost-cutting launch components.

Despite a succession of breakthroughs in booster-recovery efforts in recent months, both on land and at sea, China has yet to reuse one – a stark contrast laying bare the gap between Beijing’s space ambitions and the challenges that remain.

Last month, Chinese private aerospace company LandSpace landed the booster of its Zhuque-3 rocket on deployable landing legs at a site in the northwestern province of Gansu, marking the country’s first successful ground-based controlled recovery using landing legs, an approach that closely resembles that of SpaceX’s Falcon 9.