China achieves first land recovery of Zhuque-3 rocket's first stage

China has successfully recovered the first stage of a reusable rocket for the first time.The Zhuque-3 rocket blasted off from northwest China on Wednesday morning, and its first stage was recovered as planned.

The Zhuque-3 Y2 rocket blasted off at 7:35am Beijing time from the Dongfeng commercial space innovation pilot zone in the northwest.

The rocket was independently developed by private Chinese company Landspace.

About 2 minutes after liftoff, the rocket's first and second stages separated, with the second stage carrying satellite into its designated orbit, and the first stage entered the return phase as planned.

At an altitude of about 70 meters above the ground, its four legs developed, and it landed at the recovery site, marking China's first successful land-based controlled recovery of a rocket's first stage using deployable landing legs.

Experts say recovering a rocket is like dropping a pencil from 100 kilometres above the ground into a pen holder, and making sure it doesn't fall over.

The mission follows the successful sea-based net recovery of the Long March-10B's first stage on July 10.

Elon Musk's SpaceX and Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin have been recovering rockets since 2015, helping drive down launch costs by reusing hardware that would otherwise be discarded.

Japan is also seeking to catch up in the technology. On July 10, Japan conducted the first test flight of an experimental reusable rocket, which took off and safely landed.