In FocusChina 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. The significance of landing a launched rocket goes beyond the spectacle of bringing a booster back intact, according to industry experts. Rocket reuse was “essential for achieving low-cost, frequent and sustainable [launches] … and providing new opportunities for large-scale commercial space exploration”, a team from three major Chinese aerospace research institutions said in a paper published in March. LandSpace said the first stage represented “about 70 per cent” of a rocket’s cost, with reuse able to spread that expense over multiple missions, underscoring the cost advantages of reusing first-stage boosters. Some Chinese launch services can cost around US$20,000 per kilogram (about US$9,070 a pound) of payload, compared with roughly US$2,700 to US$3,000 for SpaceX’s reusable Falcon 9, according to a report published by the Mercator Institute for China Studies in February. The large gap helps explain why rocket makers are racing to develop vehicles that can be recovered and reused. The Chinese paper from March said there were several different approaches to bringing a rocket back, including recovery using parachutes or wings to slow the vehicle for a safer arrival. Other approaches include landing leg recovery, with the booster using its engines to control its descent before touching down vertically on deployable landing legs. While China still lags behind the US in landing leg recovery, it is also betting on a different approach to booster recovery: an offshore net-capture system that uses a recovery vessel to catch the descending booster. In July, it successfully retrieved part of a Long March-10B reusable rocket following its maiden launch by using a unique sea-based net-capture system for the first time. Compared with the landing leg recovery approach, net-capture had relatively less demanding requirements for the booster’s final landing-point accuracy, avoided the need to install heavy landing-support structures on the rocket and allowed the offshore recovery platform to be deployed flexibly, Wang Long, the founder of space technology consultancy Nihao Taikong, was quoted as saying in a report by Shenzhen-based Securities Times in July. Hao Jinjie, an engineer at China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation, told state broadcaster CGTN the net-capture method was “like dropping a pen from the 100th floor into a pencil holder, while keeping its speed and orientation under control”. China’s pursuit of reusable rockets draws on both its state aerospace groups and its ability to mobilise the private sector behind national priorities through the deployment of industrial policy. Galactic Energy’s kerosene-fuelled Pallas-1 reached orbit earlier this month, with a recovery attempt deliberately deferred to later missions. The rocket is designed to carry up to 7 tonnes to a low-Earth orbit, intended for use on the first stage of at least 25 flights. ISpace flew the same low-altitude methane demonstrator twice in 2023, though its orbital SQX-3 has yet to launch. Space Pioneer, Orienspace, Deep Blue Aerospace and Space Epoch also have reusable rockets at various stages of testing or development. To make reusability economically viable, a booster needs to be able to re-enter space and survive repeated launches. Dai Zheng, chief commander of the Zhuque-3 missions at LandSpace, said those were areas in which China had little experience. China had no established technical framework covering rocket reuse standards, inspection procedures or rules governing component replacement, Dai told state broadcaster CCTV in an interview last month. “China has just solved the question of whether a rocket can come back,” he said, adding that there was “no system yet for determining whether a recovered rocket can fly again”. In a research report published last month, analysts at Jinyuan Securities emphasised that a reusable rocket required a complete post-recovery processing cycle, including safely draining and disposing of residual propellant, isolating potential hazards and conducting non-destructive inspections of the vehicle’s structure, welds and propellant tanks. Other necessary steps involved assessing the remaining life of engines after repeated thermal and pressure cycles, replacing worn components such as seals and valves, and carrying out system-wide functional tests before another flight. LandSpace has said it plans to reuse the Zhuque-3 booster recovered last month in a space mission in the next six months, while the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology has said it aims to conduct a reuse flight of the first-stage Long March-10B by the end of this year. Success in those endeavours would mark a crucial shift for China from demonstrating that it can recover a booster to proving that it can fly one again – essential to realising its commercial space ambitions. A decade ago, a central government white paper called for research into low-cost launch vehicles and reusable transport systems capable of travelling between Earth and space. Recovery and reuse are the central technologies for lowering the cost of putting each kilogram into orbit and increasing launch frequency Xu Ying, GalaxySpace What began as a research objective has moved through engineering trials and become a national industrial push. China’s latest five-year plan made building the country into a “space power” a priority, and specifically mentioned the development of reusable launch technology, including a reusable heavy-lift launcher for deep-space programmes. Every serious ambition China has in space – from constellations of broadband satellites to orbiting computing networks and missions to the moon – will depend on reusable launch systems. “Recovery and reuse are the central technologies for lowering the cost of putting each kilogram into orbit and increasing launch frequency,” said Xu Ying, general manager of public affairs at satellite manufacturer GalaxySpace. Only then, she added, could “space infrastructure” be deployed at scale and become commercially viable. China’s two flagship broadband projects show the size of the task. China Satellite Net plans for its Guowang constellation to have 12,992 satellites, with roughly 1,300 scheduled to be in orbit by 2029 and the full network deployed by 2035. Shanghai-based SpaceSail’s Qianfan network is aiming for more than 15,000 by 2030, but the two Chinese companies combined have less than 500 satellites in orbit at present – around 4 per cent of Starlink’s orbiting fleet of more than 11,000. LandSpace launched 10 Qianfan satellites into orbit on Tuesday, marking the first deployment for a large-scale satellite internet constellation by a private Chinese rocket company. Another eight were launched on Wednesday. SpaceSail aims to expand the Qianfan constellation to 324 satellites by the end of the year – up from 256 at present – leaving a narrow window of just over three months to launch 68 more. A space industry researcher based in Xian, capital of northwestern China’s Shaanxi province, said some experts were optimistic that China would be able to make steady progress in the reusable rocket race. He said that while SpaceX – founded in 2002 – had a head start in many aspects of the commercial space sector, Chinese companies were making progress. However, he added, China’s industry might encounter difficulties due to a comparative lack of experience in advanced rocket engines, as “no one from outside China would teach you how to design them”. Engines accounted for more than 50 per cent of the total cost of a rocket, Wang Zijing, an analyst at Soochow Securities, wrote in a research note issued this month. Jinyuan Securities said engine life and repeated ignition were among the biggest technical challenges in the reuse of boosters. A reusable booster must restart its engines during ascent, re-entry and landing and operate reliably across a wide range of thrust levels, meaning that key components including its turbopumps, combustion chamber, nozzle and valves must be able to withstand repeated thermal and pressure cycles as well as vibration loads. No Chinese rocket engine has yet made a second orbital flight. Meanwhile, a SpaceX Falcon 9 booster was sent into space for the 37th time last month. “Reusable technology remains a new field that requires continued learning,” Lou Luliang, the chief designer of the Long March-10B, told Beijing-based China Aerospace News in a report published in July. “The thermal and mechanical conditions during an actual return, component damage and the patterns of reuse cannot all be fully understood through ground testing alone”.

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}SpaceX might have a head start in reusable rockets, but Chinese commercial space companies are exploring ways to catch up in the cost-saving tech

SpaceX might have a head start in reusable rockets, but Chinese commercial space companies are exploring ways to catch up in the cost-saving tech