Zhongke Yuhang, a Chinese commercial space company, has reported a successful round of acceptance tests for its self‑developed Liqing‑1 engine — a 30‑ton class, liquid‑oxygen/kerosene motor employing an advanced needle‑and‑pin injector and stainless‑steel, 3D‑printed monolithic components. The engine completed swing and variable‑thrust firing tests, demonstrating deep throttling from full power down to 50 per cent and achieving thrust control precision at the 1 per cent level. The company framed the trials as a major step toward engines that can be reused reliably on returning stages and suborbital vehicles.
The test campaign included a 330‑second set of firings in the latest session and brings the engine’s cumulative bench time to more than 1,300 seconds, which Zhongke Yuhang says exceeds five times the single‑stage flight duration anticipated for a reusable booster. That margin matters: repeated, sustained bench runs are a basic prerequisite for certifying engines for multiple flights and for understanding wear, restart behaviour and long‑duration stability. The Liqing‑1’s reported low vibration at start and during operation, together with high combustion efficiency, are attributes manufacturers prize when designing engines for controlled descent and recovery.
Technical choices underline the programme’s ambitions. Needle‑and‑pin injectors are intended to deliver stable combustion and reduce the risk of instabilities that have historically plagued kerosene engines during throttling. Additive manufacturing of integrated stainless‑steel components reduces part count and can speed iteration and lower costs, but it demands rigorous materials and post‑processing regimes to ensure repeatable life‑cycle performance. Zhongke Yuhang’s achievement in fine‑grained thrust control — a 1 per cent adjustment capability — is particularly relevant for landing burns and precision deorbit or deboost manoeuvres.
The Liqing‑1 is slated to power the company’s LiHong‑2 reusable vehicle: three of the engines will serve as the main propulsion stack for a craft that Zhongke Yuhang says will attempt a 100‑kilometre recovery test this year. The firm recently flew LiHong‑1 on a suborbital mission that validated a returnable payload cabin and tested re‑entry deceleration and accurate splashdown/landing control for the returning stage. Meanwhile, a larger sibling, Liqing‑2 — rated at about 110 tonnes of thrust — completed a 120‑second long‑duration firing in December and is being readied for a 200‑second test.
Taken together, these developments signal accelerating maturity in China’s private launch sector. Mastery of wide‑range throttling, reliable restarts and durable, low‑cost manufacturing are the building blocks of reusable launch systems that can drive down price per flight and expand demand for suborbital science flights, small‑sat deployment and potentially, commercial space tourism. But technical demonstration is only one element; regulators, supply‑chain robustness, and the company’s ability to scale tests into repeated flight successes will determine whether these engines translate into a lower‑cost, higher‑cadence launcher in practice.
Risks and limitations remain. Publicly released figures come from the company itself and outside verification will be needed as the hardware moves from the test stand to flight. Scaling a 30‑ton engine into a reusable stage that survives aerodynamic heating, landing loads and rapid refurbishment cycles is a complex systems challenge, and orbital‑class reusability demands further advances in thermal protection, avionics and recovery infrastructure. Nevertheless, the reported progress places Zhongke Yuhang among a small but growing set of Chinese private firms that are beginning to close the gap on western reusable‑engine capabilities.