China’s private space company Sepoch recovers nation's first liquid methane-fueled stainless steel reusable rocket

China's commercial space company Beijing Sepoch Technology Co (Sepoch) announced on Thursday that the nation's first reusable rocket featuring liquid oxygen-methane propulsion, a full-scale stainless steel structure, and offshore soft landing recovery successfully completed its maiden sea-based flight and recovery test.

The successful flight and recovery test, conducted at the Haiyang Oriental Aerospace Port in East China's Shandong Province, marks a major breakthrough in the development of reusable liquid-fueled rockets and serves as a significant milestone, according to the company's social media account, noting that it Sepoch became the first enterprise in China that integrating multiple rocket technologies including liquid oxygen-methane propulsion, stainless steel construction, and offshore soft landing recovery.

It also marks the entry of large-scale stainless steel reusable launch vehicles into the engineering application stage, laying a solid foundation for the maiden flight of this rocket type later this year, said Sepoch.

The rocket - verification version of Sepoch's "Hiker" rocket series - is a full-scale, thin-walled stainless steel launch vehicle with a diameter of 4.2 meters, a height of approximately 26.8 meters, and a liftoff mass of about 57 tons. The test flight lasted 125 seconds and reached an altitude of around 2.5 kilometers.

The verification flight covered eight key phases: ignition and liftoff, full-thrust ascent, variable thrust control, first engine shutdown, passive descent, engine reignition, deceleration and hovering over the sea, and final soft landing. All phases proceeded smoothly, and the rocket was successfully recovered after splashdown, according to the company.

Sepoch's test flight marks another step forward for China's commercial space sector. On May 17, ZQ-2E, an enhanced version of the ZQ-2 - the world's first liquid methane launch vehicle to reach orbit developed by Beijing-based space startup LandSpace - lifted off from Dongfeng Commercial Space Launch Site in Northwest China for its first flight of the year. The mission successfully delivered six Tianyi commercial satellites into their preset orbits, marking a complete success.

In addition, Chinese commercial space firm Galactic Energy successfully conducted a sea-based launch of its CERES-1 carrier rocket two days later, completing the first phase of the Tianqi constellation, the country's low-Earth orbit Internet of Things (IoT) satellite network, a move hailed as a milestone in enabling global device connectivity.