When Rocket Lab introduced the Rutherford engine more than a decade ago, the New Zealand-born company made an unusual bet: instead of driving propellant with heavy, complex turbopumps or relying on the low performance of pressure-fed systems, it would use battery-powered electric pumps. That gamble paid off. Electron became the dominant Western small-sat launcher, and the electric-pump architecture became a proven—if still uncommon—approach to rocket propulsion. Now a young Chinese startup is making the same wager, and it is moving fast.
Spark Space, founded in 2024 and headquartered in Hefei's National High-Tech Industry Development Zone, completed the first successful test firings of its Lieyan-2 engine in early March 2026. By June, the company had closed two funding rounds in quick succession: a pre-A round of nearly 100 million yuan (approximately $14.8 million) led by Yunze Capital and Orbital Chenguang on June 1, followed by a pre-A+ round of tens of millions of yuan from Cathay Capital announced on June 18. For a company barely two years old, that cadence suggests investors see something worth chasing.
The Engine at the Center of It All
The Lieyan-2 is a kerosene–liquid oxygen engine that produces roughly 10 metric tons of thrust at sea level. On its own, that is a modest figure—each of Rocket Lab's Rutherford engines delivers around 2.4 tons of thrust, and SpaceX's Merlin punches at roughly 85 tons. But the Lieyan-2 is designed for clustering. Spark Space's planned vehicle, the Jinhua-1 (also called Evolution-1), will mount nine Lieyan-2 engines on its first stage for a combined liftoff thrust of approximately 90 tons. A single vacuum-optimized variant will power the second stage.
What makes the Lieyan-2 notable is not its thrust class but its feed cycle. Like Rocket Lab's Rutherford, it uses electrically driven pumps to push propellant into the combustion chamber rather than the gas-generator or staged-combustion turbopump cycles that dominate large-vehicle propulsion. The electric-pump approach trades some raw performance for dramatically reduced mechanical complexity: fewer spinning parts at extreme temperatures, fewer failure modes in the turbomachinery, and a design that can be iterated and manufactured more quickly—qualities that matter enormously for a startup trying to reach orbit on venture capital timelines.
During the March test campaign, Spark Space verified the engine's design parameters, ignition stability, and vibration and pressure behavior. The company released a roughly 20-second clip of a firing, the kind of footage that has become a rite of passage for launch startups worldwide. The test data, Spark Space says, confirmed that the Lieyan-2 performs as modeled, clearing the path toward full-duration and multi-engine cluster testing.
Jinhua-1: Specs and Ambitions
The vehicle that will carry those engines is the Jinhua-1, a two-stage expendable rocket standing 27.5 meters tall with a diameter of 2.25 meters. Spark Space is targeting a payload capacity of 1,500 kilograms to low Earth orbit and 1,000 kilograms to sun-synchronous orbit. If those numbers hold, Jinhua-1 would sit in a payload class roughly five times that of Rocket Lab's Electron, which carries around 300 kilograms to LEO.
That positioning is deliberate. The global small-satellite market has fragmented into tiers: micro-launchers carrying a few hundred kilograms, light-lift vehicles hauling one to two tons, and medium-lift workhorses above that. Jinhua-1 targets the light-lift tier, a segment where demand is growing but dedicated capacity remains thin. Constellations, Earth-observation clusters, and technology demonstration missions increasingly need more payload mass than a micro-launcher can provide but do not justify booking a rideshare slot on a Falcon 9.
Spark Space plans to debut Jinhua-1 in 2027—an aggressive timeline by any standard, but not unprecedented in China's commercial launch ecosystem, where companies have moved from founding to first flight in three to four years.
The Team and the Factory Floor
Spark Space's technical bench draws from the traditional pillars of Chinese aerospace: veterans of the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC), the China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation (CASIC), and the Chinese Academy of Sciences. That pedigree matters less for prestige than for practical knowledge—these are engineers who have worked on operational flight hardware and understand the gap between a successful test firing and a reliable launch vehicle.
The company currently occupies more than 10,000 square meters of facility space in Hefei's high-tech zone, with a 20,000-square-meter expansion already underway. That expansion signals confidence not just in reaching first flight but in scaling production afterward. Building one rocket is an engineering challenge; building them reliably and repeatedly is a manufacturing one, and Spark Space appears to be investing in the infrastructure for the latter before it has achieved the former.
Funding Velocity
The back-to-back funding rounds are worth examining in context. Spark Space completed angel and angel-plus rounds within its first twelve months of existence. The pre-A round, closed on June 1, 2026, was led by Yunze Capital and Orbital Chenguang—the latter name suggesting a fund with specific aerospace conviction. Less than three weeks later, on June 18, Cathay Capital came in with a pre-A+ round of tens of millions of yuan.
Two rounds in under three weeks is unusual even by the compressed timelines of Chinese venture capital. It suggests that the March engine tests generated enough technical confidence to accelerate investor interest, and that Spark Space's management moved quickly to capitalize on the momentum rather than waiting for a single larger round. The total raised across all rounds now exceeds $14.8 million at the pre-A stage alone, with the pre-A+ adding further capital on top.
For comparison, Rocket Lab had raised approximately $25 million by the time it attempted its first Electron launch in 2017. Adjusted for the cost differences between building hardware in New Zealand versus Hefei, Spark Space's funding trajectory is in the same general neighborhood.
China's Commercial Launch Landscape
Spark Space is entering a field that barely existed a decade ago. China's commercial launch sector has exploded since policy reforms in 2014 opened the door for private companies to develop orbital vehicles. Firms like LandSpace, iSpace, Galactic Energy, and Space Pioneer have already reached orbit or are close to it, with vehicles ranging from solid-fueled micro-launchers to methane-powered medium-lift rockets.
The electric-pump approach, however, remains relatively uncommon in China's commercial roster. Most Chinese startups have gravitated toward either solid propulsion for simplicity or gas-generator kerosene engines that mirror the architecture of proven state vehicles. By choosing the electric-pump path, Spark Space is betting that the manufacturing and operational advantages of that architecture will outweigh the performance trade-offs—essentially the same thesis Rocket Lab validated with Electron, applied to a larger vehicle class.
The broader context is a global surge in launch demand. Constellation operators need dedicated rides, governments are expanding planetary exploration programs that require growing launch capacity, and the solid-rocket production base is scaling worldwide to meet military and civil needs. Every new entrant that reaches orbit adds capacity to a market that, for the moment, has more manifested payloads than available flights.
Why It Matters
Spark Space is not yet a launch company—it is a propulsion company with a launch vehicle plan and a growing pile of capital. The gap between those two things is where most rocket startups fail. But the combination of a proven engine architecture, a technically experienced team, aggressive infrastructure investment, and rapid fundraising puts it in a stronger starting position than most.
If Jinhua-1 reaches orbit by 2027, it would give the global small-satellite market another dedicated light-lift option at a time when that tier is underserved. If the electric-pump approach delivers on its promise of simpler, faster manufacturing, Spark Space could compete on launch cadence as much as on price—a factor that matters more each year as satellite operators prioritize schedule certainty over per-kilogram cost.
For now, the Lieyan-2's test data and the funding velocity tell a consistent story: a startup that has passed its earliest technical gates and is racing to convert engineering progress into a flying vehicle before the window of investor patience closes. In China's commercial launch sector, that window has historically been generous. Whether Spark Space can move fast enough to justify the bet is a question that 2027 will answer.
