The United States is still the only country in the world to successfully return an orbital-class booster, though China is still vying for the second spot with other upcoming launches.<\/p>\n
The reusable rocket, designed by the Beijing-based commercial space company LandSpace, was launched from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre in China\u2019s northwest at noon on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
After reaching a low-Earth orbit, the first stage of the rocket \u2013 the lower section that lifts the vehicle off the ground \u2013 appeared to catch fire in the air before crashing near the target recovery site.<\/p>\n
Chinese commercial and state-owned space developers have been racing to launch the country\u2019s first reusable rocket, a technology that is dominated by the US.<\/p>\n
Reusable rocket technology was pioneered by SpaceX, which achieved the world\u2019s first rocket landing after an orbital mission almost a decade ago with the Falcon 9.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The United States is still the only country in the world to successfully return an orbital-class booster, though…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":609037,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3844],"tags":[10111,187595,875,295,10224,46374,93843,130557,103738,190438,70,413,146686,1603,1987,49923,93847,190437,16,15,56372],"class_list":{"0":"post-609036","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-blue-origin","9":"tag-china-aerospace-science-and-technology-corporation","10":"tag-earth","11":"tag-elon-musk","12":"tag-falcon-9","13":"tag-jiuquan-satellite-launch-centre","14":"tag-landspace","15":"tag-long-march-12a","16":"tag-new-glenn","17":"tag-qianfan-project","18":"tag-science","19":"tag-space","20":"tag-space-pioneer","21":"tag-spacex","22":"tag-starship","23":"tag-tiangong-space-station","24":"tag-tianlong-3","25":"tag-tianque-12a-engines","26":"tag-uk","27":"tag-united-kingdom","28":"tag-zhuque-3"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115654335629649007","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/609036","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=609036"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/609036\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/609037"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=609036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=609036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=609036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}