3D Printed Propulsion Specialist Ursa Major Sells 10 Hadley Engines to Japanese Space Startup

Ursa Major, the Colorado-based specialist in scaling additive manufacturing (AM) for propulsion solutions, has reached an agreement to sell ten Hadley engines to Sirius Technologies, the US subsidiary of Tokyo’s Innovative Space Carrier (ISC). Founded in 2022, ISC is dedicated to creating a Single-Stage-to-Orbit (SSTO) vehicle capable of space transport and “point-to-point travel anywhere on Earth in under 90 minutes”.

Via the agreement, Ursa Major and Sirius will also collaborate to develop a medium-launch engine based on Ursa Major’s Arroway model — the company’s most powerful engine. A process that initially began in March 2024, the deal between Ursa Major and ISC/Sirius finally went through following approval by the US State Department of the export of “certain technical data related to the Hadley engine.”

Ursa Major began delivering the Hadley engine to commercial customers in March 2022. The engine successfully launched on its first test flight about a year ago when it powered a Stratolaunch Talon A-1 testbed that approached hypersonic speeds over the Pacific Ocean.

In a press release about the deal between Ursa Major and ISC/Sirius for ten Hadley engines and collaboration on a medium-launch engine, Ursa Major CEO Dan Jablonsky said, “The partnership ISC/Sirius and Ursa Major have forged is a truly special and powerful collaboration between two young, but incredibly agile and innovative companies working together to further safe, cost-effective access to space. Our teams in Berthoud, Colorado and our advanced manufacturing center of excellence in Youngstown, Ohio are proud to deliver our signature Hadley engines to our ISC/Sirius partner as well as advance the development of medium-launch propulsion technology.”

In a joint statement, CEO of ISC, Kojiro Hatada, and CEO of Sirius, Kei Shimada, said, “This [agreement] aligns with the commitment made during the US-Japan summit in February between the two governments to strengthen cooperation in the commercial space sector. We truly believe that advancing concrete collaboration between private companies like ours will deepen the US-Japan relationship further. Moving forward, we will work closely with Ursa Major to achieve our goal of conducting a flight test of ASCA 1.0 in the US later this year.”

When it comes to their collaboration on national security (natsec), the US has been sending Japan mixed signals. President Trump recently commented, “We have an interesting deal with Japan where we have to protect them, but they don’t have to protect us.” In contrast, defense secretary Pete Hegseth, a few weeks later, reassured Japan that the nation was an “indispensable partner in deterring communist Chinese military aggression.”

Most likely, the mixed signals relate to what all of Trump’s mixed signals seem to trace back to, the real-time, public renegotiation of more or less the entirety of US trade policy. In other words, the self-contradictory messaging is presumably tailored to encourage more deals precisely like the one between Ursa Major and ISC/Sirius.

The space industry should continue to be an especially ripe area for those sorts of deals, with the US-Japan space summit referenced by the CEOs of ISC/Sirius taking place against the backdrop of the first bilateral launch conducted by the two nations. And, as 3DPrint.com’s Vanesa Listek reported in January 2025, Toyota made a $44 million investment in Japanese 3D printed rocket specialist Interstellar Technologies, signaling that there should be willingness of global industrial giants from both nations to further reinforce the natsec partnerships.

Regarding Ursa Major and ISC/Sirius, in particular, the most exciting angle to the partnership is that the approval by the US State Department of technical data exports would seem to pave the way for a distributed manufacturing arrangement between the two companies. If that happens, Ursa Major and ISC/Sirius could help establish the precedent for exactly the sort of supply chain response called for by the current business environment’s prevailing, crippling uncertainty.

Images courtesy of Ursa Major