The US Air Drive Analysis Laboratory’s (AFRL’s) Rocket Propulsion Division at Edwards Air Drive Base has awarded a $28.6 million contract to Ursa Main for follow-on work associated to the corporate’s growth of its Draper engine. This contract helps AFRL’s broader objectives in responsive area, hypersonic, and on-orbit propulsion. Ursa Main’s first profitable hotfire check for the Draper, produced utilizing additive manufacturing (AM), was introduced in Might of 2024, lower than a 12 months after the corporate started creating the engine.
After its unusually quick achievement of that preliminary milestone, Ursa Main has gone on to conduct over 200 hotfires with the Draper. Based on SpaceNews, this newest AFRL contract for the corporate covers “work scheduled via early 2027” and can embody integration of the Draper right into a check automobile in addition to a flight demonstration.
Draper rocket engine.
Ursa Main has already demonstrated its capability for executing check flights, having efficiently accomplished an indication in March 2024, when its Hadley engine powered a Stratolaunch Talon-A1 testbed that neared hypersonic speeds over the Pacific Ocean. The Draper, which produces 4,000 kilos of thrust, is designed to construct on that success by providing better maneuverability, flexibility, and vary, all essential for countering next-generation hypersonic threats.
As was the case underneath the Biden administration, hypersonic growth continues to be a precedence for President Trump, with the White Home issuing an govt order in January calling for an “Iron Dome for America”, an initiative that locations hypersonic R&D at its middle. Impressed by Israel’s Iron Dome missile protection system, the “Golden Dome” program already has $25 billion in spending earmarked within the US Congress’s newest finances proposal.
Testing of the Draper engine mannequin.
In a press launch about Ursa Main’s $28.6 million contract from the US AFRL to proceed work on the Draper engine, the corporate’s CEO, Dan Jablonsky, mentioned, “Underneath this contract, Ursa Main serves because the lead integrator for a tactical flight demonstrator that can show the power to make use of a storable liquid rocket system for hypersonic purposes. Due to their tactical configuration, storable liquid rocket engines, like Ursa Main’s Draper, are uniquely positioned to ship to the warfighter a hypersonic functionality that’s manufacturable at scale and at a fraction of the price of options.”
Strong rocket motor propulsion capabilities.
It’s already proving to be yet one more massive 12 months for Ursa Main, with the corporate having introduced in April that it offered 10 Hadley engines to the US subsidiary of Tokyo’s Revolutionary Area Provider. Solely a few month earlier, the corporate introduced a $10-15 million contract to an unnamed buyer for satellite tv for pc propulsion programs.
Each contracts are necessary when it comes to forecasting what finally would possibly come from Ursa Main’s massive AFRL deal: the Hadley engine sale got here a few 12 months after the corporate’s profitable flight demonstration, and in-orbit propulsion is one potential software for the Draper engine. Thus, the AFRL contract issues not simply in its personal proper, however maybe much more crucially, as a result of it is going to assist put Ursa Main in an excellent place to translate the outcomes into long-term industrial development.
In the meantime, the DoD’s continued ramp-up of its hypersonic analysis bodes positively for the AM trade’s means to maintain making inroads into the protection sector. As an illustration, this context might assist clarify why Velo3D has seen a lot constructive momentum recently, given the entire firm’s work through the years on hypersonic purposes — work that features its longstanding relationship with Ursa Main.
Photographs courtesy of Ursa Main
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