A CMSA-operated amphibious capsule recovery vehicle was spotted at wenchang which more or less confirms that the Long March 10A test on February 11th will be the Mengzhou Max-Q Abort Test
You can now vote for the patches of this year's Tiangong Missions:
Here's the selection for Mengzhou-1:
On January 29, 2026, the
240-ton-class commercial reusable high-pressure staged combustion liquid oxygen-kerosene engine of CASC successfully completed a 200-second long-duration test. This engine, designed for domestic commercial users and developed for large and medium-sized reusable launch vehicles, has achieved internationally leading performance levels.
The engine is the Single-chamber version of the YF-130, this article says that it'll be used on the "CZ-10A Commercial Version" or "CZ-10C" next year. The source is unusual so i'm not 100% sold on this but the nomenclature and broad details fit with CALT's previous statements:
-in 2024, CALT Announceed a "CZ-10A Commercial Version"
-in 2025 CALT said that it'd use Kerozene and Methane-fuelled stages and fly in late 2027
-in december 2025 CALT announced that it was also called CZ-10C and according to observers at the presentation, that it'd use the same Methane upper stage as the CZ-10B with a new 1st stage that uses different engines from the YF-100K
This new version could have at least 1/3 higher thrust, the current single-core CZ-10A and CZ-10B are constrained by the low thrust of the YF-100K engines
