China just landed its second reusable rocket booster in a little more than a month.
A second Chinese launch operator recovered an orbital-class rocket booster on Tuesday, matching a milestone the country first hit a little more than a month ago. That means two separate Chinese companies have now landed boosters within roughly a month of each other. It's also a sign of how crowded this race has already become: several more Chinese launch companies, some operating under the state-owned China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation and others backed by private capital, are chasing the same reusability milestone.
For context, it took Blue Origin ten years to become the second US company to propulsively land an orbital-class booster, after SpaceX first pulled it off with Falcon 9 in 2015. China closing that same gap in about a month suggests its launch industry is replicating SpaceX's results at a pace no other country has managed. That matters because booster reuse is the single biggest lever on launch cost, and cheaper launches change who can realistically compete for satellite, cargo, and eventually crewed missions.
SpaceX still leads the pack, having added Starship's Super Heavy booster to its reusable lineup, and US challengers like Rocket Lab, Stoke Space, Relativity Space, and Firefly Aerospace are targeting first flights in the next couple of years. Whether this second Chinese landing was executed with SpaceX-level precision, or just barely stuck, is a detail the announcement conveniently leaves out.