Markham Ontario’s NordSpace has completed a test for its regeneratively cooled flight-ready rocket engine, the Hadfield-10.
The 3D printed Hadfield-10 engines are designed to propel NordSpace’s launch vehicle Tundra, which is slated to carry up to 500 kg to Low Earth Orbit (LEO). Great things have small beginnings—SpaceX’s Falcon 1 rocket had a payload capacity of just 420 kg.
On January 11, 2024, Montreal’s Reaction Dynamics reported the completion of a 30-second hot fire of its regeneratively cooled RE-101 hybrid rocket engine—the Canadian rocket race is underway.
The test is an important, and quite impressive milestone for NordSpace as they only started building the rocket and test site in Markham in early 2023. Time is of the essence to NordSpace, as its CEO Rahul Goel believes that Canada has “an extremely small window of time, no more than 3 years, to bring critical momentum to Canada’s space economy before we become essentially irrelevant on the global stage,” per a LinkedIn post.
Details for NordSpace’s plans in the next few years are limited as articles with the most information are behind a paywall (spacebahd will never charge you for Canadian space news).
What we do know (publicly) about NordSpace’s plans are that:
- NordSpace plans to complete the next and final series of tests to qualify the Hadfield-10 engine for flight, which will mark the completion of the test
- NordSpace is developing three classes of launch vehicles
- Taiga (sub-orbital)
- Boreal (light-orbital)
- Tundra (orbital)
- NordSpace plans to launch its Taiga suborbital launch vehicle in 2024, becoming the first commercial orbital-class rocket do so. (Will this be from their test site in Markham, or will a partnership with Canso, Nova Scotia’s Maritime Launch Services occur?)
- NordSpace is developing a custom bus titled “NS/104” to power all launch vehicles, satellites and robotics. They plan to launch their own constellation of eight communication and Earth obversation satellites in 2027
- NordSpace is developing autonomous rover systems to aid human exploration and in-situ resource utilization (ISRU) on the Moon while supporting the Artemis program
sources
- NordSpace website
- NordSpace Hadfield press release
- Reaction Dynamics 30 second hot fire press release
