Variable-thrust liquid rocket engines are essential for precision landing in deep-space exploration, reusable launch vehicle recovery, high-accuracy orbital maneuvers, and emergency obstacle evasions of space drones. However, with the increasingly complex space missions, challenges remain with the development of different technical schemes. In view of these issues, this paper systematically reviews the technology’s evolution through mechanical throttling, electromechanical precision regulation, and commercial space-driven deep throttling. Then, the development of key variable thrust technologies for liquid rocket engines is summarized from the perspective of thrust regulation and control strategy. For instance, thrust regulation requires synergistic flow control devices and adjustable pintle injectors to dynamically match flow rates with injection pressure drops, ensuring combustion stability across wide thrust ranges—particularly under extreme conditions during space drones’ high-maneuver orbital adjustments—though pintle injector optimization for such scenarios remains challenging. System control must address strong multivariable coupling, response delays, and high-disturbance environments, as well as bottlenecks in sensor reliability and nonlinear modeling. Furthermore, prospects are made in response to the research progress, and breakthroughs are required in cryogenic wide-range flow regulation for liquid oxygen-methane propellants, combustion stability during deep throttling, and AI-based intelligent control to support space drones’ autonomous orbital transfer, rapid reusability, and on-demand trajectory correction in complex deep-space missions.

Hypersonic unmanned flight vehicles have complex dynamic characteristics, such as nonlinearity, strong coupling, multiple constraints, and uncertainty. Operating in highly complex flight environments, hypersonic unmanned flight vehicles must not only contend with uncertainties and disturbances such as parameter perturbations and noise but also deal with complex task scenarios such as interception and no-fly zone avoidance. These factors collectively pose great challenges on the control performance of the vehicle. To address the challenges of trajectory tracking for the vehicles under complex constraints, this paper proposes a trajectory tracking control method based on model predictive control (MPC). Firstly, a nonlinear dynamic model for hypersonic unmanned flight vehicles is established. Then, a robust model predictive controller is designed and the optimal control law is derived to address the trajectory tracking control problem under complex constraints such as parameter perturbations. Finally, simulation experiments are designed under the conditions of aerodynamic parameter changes in the longitudinal plane and lateral no-fly zone avoidance. The simulation results demonstrate that the vehicle is capable of accurately and rapidly tracking the reference despite aerodynamic parameter perturbations and large-scale lateral maneuvers, thereby validating the effectiveness of the controller.