The Global Race for Reusable Rockets: SpaceX Leads While Competitors Strive to Catch Up

Blue Origin's reusable rocket engine New Shepard seen on a landing pad.

Beijing:

China's Zhuque-3 reusable rocket, developed by private company LandSpace, failed to achieve a successful landing on Wednesday, yet its inaugural launch has highlighted the global competition in reusable rocket technology.

The stainless steel vehicle is engineered to deploy satellites into orbit before returning its main stage to Earth for a vertical landing - with the intention of subsequent reuse.

If LandSpace can perfect this process, it would become the first Chinese enterprise - and only the third worldwide after SpaceX and Blue Origin - to successfully recover and reuse the main stage of an orbital rocket.

Here's the current landscape of reusable rocket technology:

SPACEX

SpaceX remains the only company that has successfully landed and reflown the main stage of an orbital rocket. Their Falcon 9 rocket has accomplished over 300 landings, with previously flown boosters launching more than 200 missions.

The larger Falcon Heavy rocket, which combines three Falcon 9 cores, utilizes identical landing technology.

SpaceX has demonstrated capabilities to land rockets both on ground-based pads and sea vessels, rapidly refurbish them for new missions, and reuse some boosters up to 20 times.

ROCKET LAB

Rocket Lab, operating from the US and New Zealand, has made components of its small Electron rocket reusable. The company has recovered first stages via parachute-assisted ocean splashdowns and subsequently reused some of the salvaged engines in later missions.

However, they have not yet achieved powered vertical landing of a complete first stage like SpaceX, nor have they reflown an entire recovered stage.

BLUE ORIGIN

Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin has developed New Shepard, a suborbital rocket that carries passengers and experiments briefly into space before returning.

The New Shepard booster executes vertical landings for subsequent reuse, though it doesn't achieve the velocity necessary to reach orbit.

In a recent milestone, Blue Origin became the second company to achieve orbital booster reuse during the second mission of its New Glenn rocket, following ten years of development.

New Glenn is among several rockets selected by Amazon to deploy its low-Earth orbit internet constellation, previously known as Project Kuiper, which will compete with Starlink.

INDIA

India's space agency, ISRO, has tested a small winged vehicle called Pushpak that is helicopter-dropped and glides back to Earth, serving as a testbed for future reusable systems. India has not yet demonstrated landing or reusing the main stage of an orbital rocket.

OTHER CHINESE FIRMS

Several Chinese private enterprises besides LandSpace, including Space Epoch, Deep Blue Aerospace and Galactic Energy, have conducted test flights where small rocket stages ascend to heights ranging from hundreds to thousands of meters before descending to upright landings.

These "hop" tests are designed to practice the takeoff and landing techniques essential for reusability. None of these companies has yet recovered the main stage of a space-bound rocket.

EUROPE

In Europe, ArianeGroup and the European Space Agency are developing a test rocket stage called Themis, expected to perform short vertical flights with subsequent landings, preparing for future reusable launch systems. European space agencies have not yet demonstrated orbital flight with recovery and reuse of a main rocket stage.