(Yicai) Dec. 23 -- China’s second attempt this month to recover the first stage of a reusable carrier rocket, which is the bottom section housing the main engines and most of the fuel, was once again unsuccessful. However, industry experts say that this setback will not change the trend of reusable rockets becoming the standard in future aerospace development.

A Long March-12A Y1 carrier rocket was launched from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China today. The second stage, which carries the payload such as a satellite or spacecraft into outer space, successfully reached the designated orbit, but the first stage was not recovered, according to Xinhua News Agency.

The rocket, developed by the Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology under the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp., is a reusable version of the Long March-12. The Long March-12 is currently China's most powerful single-core rocket, with a payload capacity of at least 12 tons to low-Earth orbit and no less than six tons to a 700-kilometer sun-synchronous orbit.

Although the recovery of the rocket's first stage was not successful, the mission still provided critical engineering data under real flight conditions, laying an important foundation for subsequent launches and stage recoveries, according to a post on the State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense’s social media account.

The development team will soon conduct a full review of the experiment, making every effort to identify the cause of the failure, optimize recovery plans and continue testing reusable technology, it said.

As technology evolves and taking cost constraints, launch efficiency and commercial needs into account, reusable rockets are expected to become the standard configuration for next-generation rockets in the future, a space simulation engineer told Yicai. Every newly developed expendable rocket will likely also have a reusable version planned alongside it.

Rocket recovery failures are an inevitable part of the testing process, the engineer added. The key lies in turning the uncertainties experienced during each test into practical experience.

Earlier this month, private Chinese aerospace company LandSpace Technology made its first flight with the reusable rocket Zhuque-3 on Dec. 3. The second stage was successfully placed into the intended orbit, but the first stage was not recovered.

Editors: Dou Shicong, Kim Taylor