Ursa Major’s 3D Printed Hadley Engine Takes First Flight

Additive manufacturing is soaring higher and higher as it continues to cement its place in the space industry. Case in point, only two years since emerging on the Aerospace AM scene, Ursa Major has announced the first flight of its Hadley engine, which was made using 3D printing along with other techniques, during a test of the Stratolaunch’s Talon-A1 (TA-1) testbed. The news marks “a major leap forward toward the first flight test of a privately funded hypersonic vehicle,” according to the company.

To give some context, Colorado and Ohio-based Ursa Major was founded in 2015 by former SpaceX and Blue Origin propulsion engineer Joe Laurienti. The company puts itself forward as the leading independent rocket propulsion provider in the United States, as well as the first American company to fire an oxygen-rich staged combustion engine (previously only done in Russia). Ursa Major became more widely known in the 3D printing sector as well in 2022 with the announcement that its Advanced Manufacturing Lab in Youngstown, Ohio had delivered its first copper-based, 3D-printed rocket engine combustion chambers. Now it has shown its growth with the first flight of its 3D printed Hadley engine.

Joe Laurienti with the Hadley engine

The First Flight of the Ursa Major Hadley Engine

As mentioned, the Hadley engine’s first flight was powering the TA-1 testbed during a test over the Pacific Ocean. Though Stratolaunch has stayed quiet on many of the details of the test out of respect to its customers, the company did announce that the test reached high supersonic speeds approaching Mach 5. This is the limit wherein speed becomes hypersonic, or five times the speed of sound.