Beijing-based commercial launch startup Welight says a preburner for its Huaguang-1 rocket engine has completed a long-duration hot-fire test. Huaguang-1 is a full-flow staged combustion engine that burns liquid oxygen and methane.
The test follows earlier short-duration ignition runs, which showed that the preburner could ignite and sustain combustion briefly. The company says the component has now moved from "it lights" to "it holds steady," and calls the result a key milestone before a full-engine hot-fire test.
A preburner burns a small amount of propellant to produce hot, high-pressure gas that drives the turbopumps feeding the main combustion chamber. A full-flow staged combustion engine uses two of them: a fuel-rich preburner and an oxidizer-rich preburner, with both propellant streams passing through them before meeting in the main chamber. This approach can lower turbine temperatures and thermal loads for the same power, which suits high performance and reuse. It is also hard to engineer, because the two preburners, two turbopumps and precise timing and control are tightly coupled.
According to the company, the earlier short tests mainly checked ignition and startup. The long-duration run focused on behavior under sustained combustion and on how the thermal environment affects the component. The test collected data for combustion stability analysis, thermal protection design and structural reliability checks. The preburner work has progressed from injector water-flow tests to short ignition and now to long-duration firing.
The company has not published burn duration, chamber pressure or other test figures. Welight says it will continue analyzing the data and moving forward with component development and system integration toward a full-engine hot-fire test, without giving a date.
Huaguang-1 is intended to power the company's Weiguang-1 medium-lift reusable launch vehicle, which is designed to use a cluster of the engines on its first stage. Full-flow staged combustion remains rare in operational rocket engines worldwide, so a working component is an early but meaningful step.
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