Newshot CAS Space: Liqing Series Engines Complete Key Hot-Fire Assessments, Achieving Complete Success
IT Home, November 12 news: CAS Space announced today that recently, the Liqing-1 and Liqing-2 pintle-type liquid oxygen/kerosene engines independently developed by CAS Space successively completed key hot-fire assessments, with the tests achieving complete success, further advancing the performance verification and reliability verification of the two engine models.
IT Home has learned that the 30-tonne-class Liqing-1 engine successfully completed multiple-start and continuous variable-condition hot-fire assessments. This test campaign successively completed 4 startup ignitions, covering continuous variable-thrust conditions within the 100%~40% thrust range; the engine started and shut down normally, operated smoothly, and performed stably, with cumulative test duration of more than 700 seconds, of which the longest single operating time was 300 seconds. To date, the Liqing-1 engine has accumulated more than 2000 seconds of reliability hot-fire testing.
As the main propulsion system of the Lihong-2 reusable launch vehicle, the Liqing-1 engine can fully adapt to the full-process, multi-condition flight mission requirements of the launch vehicle, including ascent acceleration, attitude deceleration, orbital return, and landing recovery, providing key propulsion support for Lihong-2 to carry out reusable flight verification.
At the same time, the 110-tonne-class Liqing-2 engine successfully completed multiple long-duration hot-fire tests. A single engine's test duration exceeded 1000 seconds, far exceeding the first-stage flight time of a rocket and fully covering the entire process from rocket ignition to first-stage separation. To date, the Liqing-2 engine has accumulated more than 5000 seconds of reliability hot-fire testing.
As a 110-tonne-class liquid propulsion product independently developed by CAS Space, the Liqing-2 engine focuses on breakthroughs in technologies such as the high-efficiency combustion technology of a large thrust chamber at 0.97, the low inlet pressure technology of the liquid oxygen pump with a high cavitation specific speed, and the high reliability of the turbopump rotor system during long-time operation, laying the propulsion foundation for the Lijian-2 launch vehicle to achieve high-frequency, low-cost reusable operation.
According to the introduction, multiple long-duration hot-fire tests are a comprehensive assessment of the engine's performance boundaries, condition adaptability, and operational reliability. This test campaign focused on various boundary conditions such as high and low conditions, high and low mixture ratios, high and low inlet pressures, and subcooled liquid oxygen, systematically assessing the engine's adaptability under different operating parameters and propellant conditions, obtaining performance parameters under key conditions, and providing test basis for engine performance evaluation, design optimization, and reliability analysis.
At the same time, through test verification and technical optimization, core parameters such as thrust chamber combustion efficiency and liquid oxygen pump cavitation specific speed have been improved, laying a core foundation for subsequent reliability qualification and batch production.