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 — and by May 2026 his startup had logged 1,000 seconds of accumulated test time on a closed-cycle kerolox engine

Roughly two years after it opened its doors, a Xi’an 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 — the kind of endurance number that until now belonged almost exclusively to engines designed inside [...] The post When Zhang Chenxing, who holds a PhD from MIT, co-founded Mega Engine Technology in Xi’an in early 2024, China’s