Kicking off production and acceptance testing for Spectrum’s first-flight engines

Kiruna, October 26, 2023 - It has been exciting and busy at Isar Aerospace's test site in Esrange, Sweden.

Significant milestone achieved: long duration integrated engine hotfires

Our team has achieved a significant milestone of running integrated engine hotfires for 260 seconds with our in-house developed Aquila engine in multiple firings, representing significantly longer time than the engine needs to endure during flight. We exceeded the planned test objectives hotfiring one of the engines six times without any refurbishment.

Vice President of Propulsion Can Araz, responsible for the engine development at Isar Aerospace, is clearly proud of the teams’ work: “Our teams have worked very hard to develop the engine from a blank sheet of paper to a fully functioning, in-house-produced and -tested system and we couldn't be prouder of this achievement.”

Ulrich Maurer, Isar Aerospace’s Director for the Aquila Engines, explains what comes next: “We are in the final development stages of the Aquila engine focusing on determining the exact operating windows, optimizing the procedures and sequences and stress testing as much as possible before first flight. Flight engines are currently in manufacturing.”

Daniel-Patrick Heatley, Lead Engineer Kiruna Operations, oversees all engine tests at Isar Aerospace's test site in Esrange and summarizes in the video: “We are working on the preparations for one of the final engines we are going to test before we begin acceptance testing of engines for our first flight – and that is quite exciting.”

Watch the video

Link to one of the latest testing video: https://youtu.be/lUuK1uDiqx8

About Isar Aerospace

Isar Aerospace, based in Ottobrunn/Munich, develops and builds launch vehicles for transporting small and medium-sized satellites as well as satellite constellations into Earth’s orbit. The company was founded in 2018 as a spin-off of Technical University Munich. Since then, it has grown to more than 300 employees from more than 40 nations with many years of hands-on rocket know-how and experience within other high-tech industries. More information via: www.isaraerospace.com

Press contact Isar Aerospace

Tina Schmitt
E tina.schmitt@isaraerospace.com