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Asia In Brief Chinese rocketry outfit LandSpace last week flew what it hoped would be the country’s first reusable rocket, only to watch it explode while attempting to land.

The Zhuque-3 Y1 lifted off from the Dongfeng Commercial Aerospace Innovation Test Zone last Wednesday and performed as expected by placing its second stage in the desired orbit. But the planned soft landing of its first stage went awry, causing an explosion.

LandSpace nonetheless celebrated the mission for successfully demonstrating several new technologies, among them a nine-engine parallel liquid oxygen-methane propulsion system, new aerodynamic and flight control tech, and advanced welding techniques that reduced manufacturing costs by 80 percent.

“Breakthroughs were made in online trajectory optimization, attitude stabilization, and high-precision control technologies under complex constraints, wide-range state changes, and highly uncertain environments,” the company said.

The company also pointed out that its rocket used a “high-bandwidth, high-reliability real-time communication platform ...