Venus Aerospace, an aerospace startup, has made significant progress in developing a cutting-edge hypersonic engine. The company announced the completion of a key technological advancement, supported by NASA, which will be incorporated into an upcoming flight demonstration later this year.
NASA’s Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program has been instrumental in funding innovative aerospace technologies. With the support of this program, Venus Aerospace tested new nozzle designs for its compact rocket engine, which helps shape and direct the engine’s power. The new design performed beyond expectations and will be used in an upcoming ground-based launch test.
Sassie Duggleby, CEO of Venus Aerospace, stated, “We have already proven that our engine outperforms traditional systems in terms of efficiency and size. The technology we developed with NASA’s support will now be part of our integrated engine platform, bringing us closer to demonstrating that efficient, compact, and affordable hypersonic flight can be scaled.”
The engine at the heart of Venus’s flight platform is a Rotating Detonation Rocket Engine (RDRE), a system long considered promising but never proven on a large scale. Venus is the first U.S. company to develop a scalable, affordable RDRE that is ready for flight. Unlike conventional rocket engines, Venus’s RDRE generates power through supersonic shockwaves, or detonations, which require less fuel while producing more power.
Readiness for Flight
Andrew Duggleby, CTO of Venus Aerospace, emphasized, “This is just the beginning of what we can achieve with Venus propulsion technology. We have created a compact, high-performance system that will revolutionize aerospace, defense, and many other industries. We are confident in its readiness for flight.”
The upcoming flight demonstration will be a major milestone for Venus, showcasing the potential of efficient, detonation-based propulsion at scale. The integrated system is now one of the most advanced of its kind, with Venus having already demonstrated engine efficiency in the upper 90th percentile compared to traditional rocket engines.
This development follows a series of key breakthroughs by Venus Aerospace. Last autumn, the company introduced a high-speed engine system capable of takeoff, acceleration, and hypersonic cruise — all powered by a single engine. While most high-speed systems rely on multiple engines to operate at different speeds, Venus’s solution reduces cost, weight, and complexity by using a single engine for all phases of flight.
The Venus engine system delivers rocket-like takeoff power and jet-like cruise efficiency in a compact form, offering major advantages in speed, range, reusability, and cost. This allows a vehicle to accelerate from the runway to Mach 5+ without changing engines.
Venus’s system is designed to support a variety of applications, including spacecraft landers, low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites, space cargo transfer vehicles, rocket kick-stages, and hypersonic drones and missiles.
