From the outside, China’s Zhuque-3 rocket looks like a clone of SpaceX’s Falcon 9.
There’s a race in China among several companies vying to become the next to launch and land an orbital-class rocket, and the starting gun could go off as soon as tonight.
LandSpace, one of several maturing Chinese rocket startups, is about to launch the first flight of its medium-lift Zhuque-3 rocket. Liftoff could happen around 11 pm EST tonight (04:00 UTC Wednesday), or noon local time at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwestern China.
Airspace warning notices advising pilots to steer clear of the rocket’s flight path suggest LandSpace has a launch window of about two hours. When it lifts off, the Zhuque-3 (Vermillion Bird-3) rocket will become the largest commercial launch vehicle ever flown in China. What’s more, LandSpace will become the first Chinese launch provider to attempt a landing of its first stage booster, using the same tried-and-true return method pioneered by SpaceX and, more recently, Blue Origin in the United States.
This is a “successful example for efficient emergency response in the international space industry.”
An unpiloted Chinese spacecraft launched late Monday and linked up with the country’s Tiangong space station a few hours later, providing a lifeboat for three astronauts stuck in orbit without a safe ride home.
A Long March 2F rocket fired its engines and lifted off with the Shenzhou 22 spacecraft, carrying cargo instead of a crew, at 11:11 pm EST Monday (04:11 UTC Tuesday). The spacecraft docked with the Tiangong station nearly 250 miles (400 kilometers) above the Earth about three-and-a-half hours later.
Chinese engineers worked fast to move up the launch of the Shenzhou 22, originally set to fly next year. On November 5, officials discovered one of the two crew ferry ships docked to the Tiangong station had a cracked window, likely from an impact with a small fragment of space junk.
With the government shutdown over, the FAA has lifted its daytime launch curfew.
Welcome to Edition 8.20 of the Rocket Report! For the second week in a row, Blue Origin dominated the headlines with news about its New Glenn rocket. After a stunning success November 13 with the launch and landing of the second New Glenn rocket, Jeff Bezos’ space company revealed a roadmap this week showing how engineers will supercharge the vehicle with more engines. Meanwhile, in South Texas, SpaceX took a step toward the first flight of the next-generation Starship rocket. There will be no Rocket Report next week due to the Thanksgiving holiday in the United States. We look forward to resuming delivery of all the news in space lift the first week of December.
As always, we welcome reader submissions. If you don’t want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets, as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.
Northrop’s Pegasus rocket wins a rare contract. A startup named Katalyst Space Technologies won a $30 million contract from NASA in August to build a robotic rescue mission for the agency’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory in low-Earth orbit. Swift, in space since 2004, is a unique instrument designed to study gamma-ray bursts, the most powerful explosions in the Universe. The spacecraft lacks a propulsion system and its orbit is subject to atmospheric drag, and NASA says it is “racing against the clock” to boost Swift’s orbit and extend its lifetime before it falls back to Earth. On Wednesday, Katalyst announced it selected Northrop Grumman’s air-launched Pegasus XL rocket to send the rescue craft into orbit next year.
“This does not meet the release conditions for a safe manned return.”
Wrapping up 204 days in orbit, three Chinese astronauts flew back to Earth aboard a Shenzhou spacecraft Friday, leaving three crewmates behind on the Tiangong space station with a busted lifeboat.
Commander Chen Dong, concluding his third trip to space, and rookie crewmates Chen Zhongrui and Wang Jie touched down inside their spacecraft at the Dongfeng landing zone at 1:29 am EST (06:29 UTC) Friday. The parachute-assisted landing occurred in the mid-afternoon at the return zone, located in the remote Gobi Desert of northwestern China.
Chinese space officials upended operations on the country’s Tiangong space lab last week after astronauts found damage to one of two Shenzhou return capsules docked at the station. The China Manned Space Agency, run by the country’s military, announced changes to the space station’s flight plan November 4, the day before three crew members were supposed to depart and fly home.
The Olares One isn’t the only new mini PC with NVIDIA RTX 50 Series graphics. Chinese PC maker Thunderobot has introduced a compact PC that looks more like a game console than a traditional computer. But under the hood it has the guts of a high-p…
The Olares One isn’t the only new mini PC with NVIDIA RTX 50 Series graphics. Chinese PC maker Thunderobot has introduced a compact PC that looks more like a game console than a traditional computer. But under the hood it has the guts of a high-performance gaming laptop. The Thunderobot MIX G2 is a computer with […]
The three-man crew was supposed to return to Earth on Wednesday to wrap up six months in space.
Three Chinese astronauts were due to depart the Tiangong space station, reenter the atmosphere, and land in the remote desert of Inner Mongolia on Wednesday. Instead, officials ordered the crew to remain at the station while engineers investigate a potential problem with their landing craft.
The China Manned Space Agency, run by the country’s military, announced the change late Tuesday in a brief statement posted to Weibo, the Chinese social media platform.
“The Shenzhou 20 manned spacecraft is suspected of being impacted by small space debris,” the statement said. “Impact analysis and risk assessment are underway. To ensure the safety and health of the astronauts and the complete success of the mission, it has been decided that the Shenzhou 20 return mission, originally scheduled for November 5, will be postponed.”
“SpaceX shares the goal of returning to the Moon as expeditiously as possible.”
SpaceX on Thursday released the most detailed public update in nearly two years on its multibillion-dollar contract to land astronauts on the Moon for NASA, amid growing sentiment that China is likely to beat the United States back to the lunar surface with humans.
In a lengthy statement published on SpaceX’s website Thursday, the company said it “will be a central enabler that will fulfill the vision of NASA’s Artemis program, which seeks to establish a lasting presence on the lunar surface… and ultimately forge the path to land the first humans on Mars.”
Getting to Mars is SpaceX’s overarching objective, a concise but lofty mission statement introduced by Elon Musk at the company’s founding nearly a quarter-century ago. Musk has criticized NASA’s Artemis program, which aims to return US astronauts to the Moon for the first time since the last Apollo lunar mission in 1972, as unambitious and too reliant on traditional aerospace contractors.
A South Korean rocket startup will soon make its first attempt to reach low-Earth orbit.
Welcome to Edition 8.16 of the Rocket Report! The 10th anniversary of SpaceX’s first Falcon 9 rocket landing is coming up at the end of this year. We’re still waiting for a second company to bring back an orbital-class booster from space for a propulsive landing. Two companies, Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin and China’s LandSpace, could join SpaceX’s exclusive club as soon as next month. (Bezos might claim he’s already part of the club, but there’s a distinction to be made.) Each company is in the final stages of launch preparations—Blue Origin for its second New Glenn rocket, and LandSpace for the debut flight of its Zhuque-3 rocket. Blue Origin and LandSpace will both attempt to land their first stage boosters downrange from their launch sites. They’re not exactly in a race with one another, but it will be fascinating to see how New Glenn and Zhuque-3 perform during the uphill and downhill phases of flight, and whether one or both of the new rockets stick the landing.
As always, we welcome reader submissions. If you don’t want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets, as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.
The race for space-based interceptors. The Trump administration’s announcement of the Golden Dome missile defense shield has set off a race among US companies to develop and test space weapons, some of them on their own dime, Ars reports. One of these companies is a 3-year-old startup named Apex, which announced plans to test a space-based interceptor as soon as next year. Apex’s concept will utilize one of the company’s low-cost satellite platforms outfitted with an “Orbital Magazine” containing multiple interceptors, which will be supplied by an undisclosed third-party partner. The demonstration in low-Earth orbit could launch as soon as June 2026 and will test-fire two interceptors from Apex’s Project Shadow spacecraft. The prototype interceptors could pave the way for operational space-based interceptors to shoot down ballistic missiles. (submitted by biokleen)
“Sean said that NASA might benefit from being part of the Cabinet.”
The clock just ticked past noon here in Houston, Texas, so it’s acceptable to have a drink, right?
Because after another turbulent morning of closely following the rough-and-tumble contest to become the next NASA administrator, I sure could use one.
What has happened now? Why, it was only SpaceX founder Elon Musk, who is NASA’s most important contractor, referring to the interim head of the space agency, Sean Duffy, as “Sean Dummy,” and suggesting he was trying to kill NASA. Musk later added, “The person responsible for America’s space program can’t have a 2 digit IQ.”
The Asus ROG NUC is a compact desktop computer that stuffs the guts of a high-performance gaming laptop into the body of a mini PC. Earlier this year Asus introduced a 2025 model with support for up to an Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX Arrow Lake processor a…
The Asus ROG NUC is a compact desktop computer that stuffs the guts of a high-performance gaming laptop into the body of a mini PC. Earlier this year Asus introduced a 2025 model with support for up to an Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX Arrow Lake processor and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 graphics, but now […]
