{"id":260342,"date":"2026-05-31T11:21:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-31T15:21:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/31\/when-zhang-chenxing-who-holds-a-phd-from-mit-co-founded-mega-engine-technology-in-xian-in-early-2024-chinas-high-pressure-oxygen-rich-staged-combustion-know-how-sat-almost-entirely-inside-state-p\/"},"modified":"2026-05-31T11:35:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-31T15:35:10","slug":"when-zhang-chenxing-who-holds-a-phd-from-mit-co-founded-mega-engine-technology-in-xian-in-early-2024-chinas-high-pressure-oxygen-rich-staged-combustion-know-how-sat-almost-entirely-inside-state-p","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/31\/when-zhang-chenxing-who-holds-a-phd-from-mit-co-founded-mega-engine-technology-in-xian-in-early-2024-chinas-high-pressure-oxygen-rich-staged-combustion-know-how-sat-almost-entirely-inside-state-p\/","title":{"rendered":"When Zhang Chenxing, who holds a PhD from MIT, co-founded Mega Engine Technology in Xi’an in early 2024, China’s high-pressure oxygen-rich staged-combustion know-how sat almost entirely inside state propulsion houses \u2014 and by May 2026 his startup had logged 1,000 seconds of accumulated test time on a closed-cycle kerolox engine"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Zhang Chenxing, who holds a PhD from MIT, co-founded Mega Engine Technology in Xi’an in early 2024, China’s high-pressure oxygen-rich staged-combustion know-how sat almost entirely inside state propulsion houses \u2014 and by May 2026 his startup had logged 1,000 seconds of accumulated test time on a closed-cycle kerolox engine<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/spacedaily.com\/sd-when-zhang-chenxing-who-holds-a-phd-from-mit-co-founded-mega-engine-technology-in-xian-in-early-2024-chinas-high-pressure-oxygen-rich-staged-combustion-know-how-sat-almost-entirely-inside-st\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Publish Date: 2026-05-31 11:21:00<\/a><\/p>\n

Source Domain: spacedaily.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Roughly two years after it opened its doors, a Xi\u2019an commercial startup called Mega Engine Technology has announced that a single high-pressure oxygen-rich staged-combustion kerolox engine accumulated 1,000 seconds of run time at rated conditions across its test campaign \u2014 the kind of endurance number that until now belonged almost exclusively to engines designed inside China\u2019s state propulsion houses.<\/p>\n

The company disclosed the results in a Chinese social media post on May 25, 2026, according to SpaceNews, describing the engine \u2014 called Chi, which translates roughly as \u201cblazing\u201d \u2014 as having demonstrated rapid startup, stable operation, and intact hardware on post-test inspection. Total program test accumulation across all firings has reached 2,000 seconds.<\/p>\n

The performance figures place Chi squarely in the class of engines that matter for reusable medium-lift launchers. Sea-level thrust is reportedly throttleable between 35 and 75 tons, rising to 87 tons in vacuum. Sea-level specific impulse is rated at 302 seconds, climbing to 350 seconds at altitude.<\/p>\n

Why Oxygen-Rich Staged Combustion Matters<\/h2>\n

Staged combustion is hard. The cycle pre-burns a portion of the propellants in a small chamber to drive the turbopump, then injects that hot, oxygen-rich gas into the main combustion chamber where the rest of the fuel completes the burn. The result is higher chamber pressure and meaningfully better specific impulse than the open-cycle gas-generator engines most commercial startups have built.<\/p>\n

The catch is metallurgy. Hot, oxygen-rich gas running through turbine blades and manifolds at high pressure tends to set metal on fire. Soviet engineers cracked the problem first \u2014 Valentin Glushko\u2019s KB Energomash flew the oxygen-rich staged-combustion RD-253 on Proton in 1965, and the much larger RD-170 family followed in the 1980s. Outside Russia, only a handful of programs have replicated it. Europe\u2019s ESA staged-combustion demonstrator ran at sub-scale at the DLR…<\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When Zhang Chenxing, who holds a PhD from MIT, co-founded Mega Engine Technology in Xi’an…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":260344,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/spacedaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/a-private-chinese-startup-just-ran-a-ker.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-260342","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260342"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=260342"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260342\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":260346,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260342\/revisions\/260346"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/260344"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=260342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=260342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=260342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}