BEIJING - A partially reusable Chinese rocket crash-landed after launching into space, according to state media, illustrating the challenges the country faces as it chases the technology mastered by Mr Elon Musk's SpaceX.
The Zhuque-3 took off from the Dongfeng Commercial Aerospace Innovation Test Zone launch site in north-west China on Dec 3, but an "abnormal burn" occurred during the recovery phase, according to Xinhua.
Beijing-based start-up LandSpace Technology's mission marked the first attempt by a Chinese space company to reach orbit and recover a first-stage booster.
SpaceX has been recovering and recycling the boosters of its Falcon 9 rockets since 2017, helping Mr Musk's company to shorten the time between launches and reduce their costs.
With those advantages, SpaceX has grabbed a near-monopoly in heavy-lift rocket launches and become the dominant provider of internet services from low-Earth orbit. The company has a network of about 9,000 Starlink satellites.
China is in the early stages of building Starlink-like networks and relies on single-use rockets to send satellites to orbit, although companies are developing their own reusable rockets to narrow those gaps.
Other reusable rockets in the works include the Tianlong-3 from Beijing Space Pioneer Technology and the Hyperbola-3 from Interstellar Glory Aerospace Science and Technology, also known as iSpace.
In the US, such projects are raising alarms at the Pentagon.
"I'm concerned about when the Chinese figure out how to do reusable lift that allows them to put more capability on orbit at a quicker pace, cadence, than they currently exist," US Space Force Brigadier-General Brian Sidari said at a conference in National Harbor, Maryland in September.
LandSpace's Zhuque-3 is 66m tall and can carry as many as 18 satellites per launch, according to state media.
One of the leading start-ups to emerge in the decade since China's government opened the industry to private sector participation, LandSpace in 2023 became the world's first company to launch a rocket fuelled by methane, which has potential to be cleaner and safer than fuels currently used. BLOOMBERG