Ursa Major Hadley Engines Ordered by Phantom Space

Phantom Space Corporation, a space applications company, has signed an agreement to purchase more than 200 rocket engines from Ursa Major. The order includes Ursa Major's 5,000-pound thrust Hadley engines and the new 50,000-pound thrust Ripley engines. By using Ursa Major's Hadley engines, Phantom's Daytona rocket is slated for orbital launch in 2023, just three years after Phantom Space was formed.

"We invite the U.S. space industry to reimagine their programs with the revolutionary assumption that they have virtually on-demand access to domestically made, high-performing, affordable, and reliable propulsion."

Joe Laurienti, founder and CEO of Ursa Major.

Under the terms of the agreement, Ursa Major will supply hundreds of its Hadley engines in different configurations including ground test and upper-stage vacuum variants, as well as numerous Ripley engines for planned upgrades to the Daytona vehicle.

"Phantom's strategy leverages a mature U.S.-only supply chain to deliver the lowest cost US built small launch vehicle on the market," said Jim Cantrell, CEO of Phantom Space. "Ursa Major is a core component of this strategy with flight-ready, reliable, high-performance engines that are configurable for not only our workhorse Daytona and Laguna launch vehicles but also a family of enhanced future launch configurations. Ursa Major's combination of affordability and a 'get it done' attitude has made them a complete pleasure to work with."

Phantom's agreement with Ursa Major is emblematic of a new way to access space quickly, affordably, and reliably. It breaks from the long-established process of either purchasing Russian or Ukrainian engines that are no longer available or building engines in-house at great expense and program risk. With this deal, Phantom and Ursa Major will add critical launch capacity to the market at a time when several record-sized orders for launch vehicles have appropriated available launch capacity over the next decade.

"Together, Ursa Major and Phantom Space are proving to satellite operators, government partners, and the rest of the industry that they're no longer stymied by outdated, and now unavailable, rocket engines," said Joe Laurienti, founder and CEO of Ursa Major. "We invite the U.S. space industry to reimagine their programs with the revolutionary assumption that they have virtually on-demand access to domestically made, high-performing, affordable, and reliable propulsion."

Phantom will use the 5,000-lbf Hadley and the 50,000-lbf Ripley in launch configurations optimized for cost, performance, time-to-market, and reliability. The first iteration of Daytona will have nine Hadley engines for its first stage and a single Hadley for its upper stage. An upgraded Daytona will debut in 2024 using a single Ripley engine on the first stage with a Hadley engine for the upper stage. The larger Laguna rocket, set for 2025, will be powered by a combination of Ripley and Hadley engines to increase the mass performance of the vehicle.

Both Phantom and Ursa Major are part of the "New Space" cohort of companies that are changing the fundamental approach of how we access space both in terms of technology as well as their specialized business models.

(Source: Phantom Space news release. Image from file)