Canadian aerospace company NordSpace has received advisory support and up to $335,000 in funding from the National Research Council of Canada Industrial Research Assistance Program (NRC IRAP) for an R&D project supporting the development of medium-lift rocket engines.
According to the aerospace company, the project is directed toward advancing large-format, multi-material metal AM capabilities for the production of large-scale, regeneratively cooled engines.
To carry out this development, NordSpace has partnered with Germany-based organizations including the Fraunhofer Institute for Laser Technology (ILT) and SWMS Systemtechnik Ingenieurgesellschaft mbH. Fraunhofer ILT is contributing its EHLA high-speed laser deposition technology, and SWMS is providing its CAESA software, which is used to optimise manufacturing toolpaths through AI-driven planning.
“Canada’s growing demand for responsive and cost-effective medium-lift space launch requires continuous investment in disruptive manufacturing technologies that shorten development cycles, boost reliability, and reduce production costs,” said Rahul Goel, CEO and Founder of NordSpace.
Preparing engines for medium lift
Engine designs developed under the program are intended to undergo hot-fire testing as part of qualification activity and be prepared for commercial-scale production. The project scope is limited to manufacturing and engine-level development, rather than vehicle integration.
That manufacturing focus reflects work already underway inside the company. NordSpace launched its Advanced Manufacturing for Aerospace Lab earlier this year with support from the Ontario Centre for Innovation (OCI), following a separate advanced manufacturing project funded by the Canadian Space Agency (CSA). The lab has since been used to accelerate development of the company’s 3D printed Hadfield engines through AI-assisted design methods and in-house testing.
Those engine development efforts sit alongside NordSpace’s broader launch vehicle roadmap. The company is developing the Tundra and Tundra+ light-lift launch vehicles, designed to deliver 500 kg and 1,100 kg to low Earth orbit, with both platforms intended to scale toward the planned Titan medium-lift launcher targeting payloads exceeding 5,000 kg to orbit in the early 2030s.
It is at that point of scale that manufacturing considerations begin to dominate the propulsion program. As launch vehicles move into the medium-lift class, propulsion programs are increasingly constrained by manufacturing and qualification capacity rather than engine design maturity. Larger regeneratively cooled engines increase internal channel density and inspection complexity, raising process sensitivity and extending qualification timelines even when underlying engine concepts remain unchanged.
The NordSpace project addresses these production and qualification limits by focusing on build rate, geometric control, and process planning for large, multi-material engine components. The work does not alter vehicle configuration or certification requirements, and its impact is confined to whether medium-lift-class engines can be produced and validated with sufficient consistency to support scale.
Manufacturability across engine development
Elsewhere, developments in liquid propulsion have shown manufacturing considerations being addressed earlier in the development cycle. Dubai-based engineering firm LEAP 71 demonstrated this shift by hot-firing 3D printed methane-liquid oxygen engines generated directly from a computational model that embedded production constraints alongside performance requirements.
By collapsing the boundary between design and fabrication, the work illustrated how additive manufacturing could be used to manage geometric and thermal complexity before scale amplified those challenges.
At a later stage of development, similar constraints have historically reappeared during scale-up and testing. In 2022, US-based launch company Launcher advanced its E-2 liquid rocket engine program using large, single-piece copper alloy combustion chambers produced on custom large-format additive manufacturing systems.
Progress at the time was shaped by repeated hot-fire campaigns, reuse of printed hardware, and incremental performance gains, underscoring how manufacturing iteration tended to set the pace of engine development as size and operating pressure increased.
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Featured image shows NordSpace’s Tundra portable orbital launch vehicle. Photo via NordSpace.
