The Next Decade of Scaling the Future of Space and Defense

Ursa Major has spent the last decade building something rare in American industry: a company with true expertise in delivering propulsion fast, reliably, and at scale. As the United States confronts accelerating threats in space and across every domain, the demand for dependable propulsion partners has never been higher.

Now ten years in, Ursa Major is no longer a start-up, but an established, growing defense and aerospace company with a decade of engine development, flight heritage, and production proof behind it. “We’re past the phase of proving we can build engines,” says Chris Spagnoletti, President, Liquid Systems. “Now we’re proving we can build them again and again, faster each time, and affordably, for customers who demand reliability and top performance.”

Over that decade, Ursa Major produced and hot-fired more than 100 liquid engines and accumulated over 100,000 seconds of test time. Hadley has powered multiple hypersonic flights, including sustained Mach 5+ missions with vehicle recovery. Draper has already been hot-fired over 250 times and is sprinting toward flight under an AFRL contract. In parallel, Ursa Major’s common modular SRM manufacturing approach is demonstrating American-made, surge-ready motor production at a pace the industrial base has not seen in years. With innovative manufacturing methods, our solutions are more affordable than others on the market.

Investment confidence mirrors that reality. The company’s recent Series E fundraise strengthened long-term stability, and board additions like Dr. Ron Sugar signal a governance structure built for the scale and discipline of a prime contractor.

“Our board expects us to deliver for customers and to grow responsibly,” Spagnoletti says. “They are here because they believe Ursa Major will be a dominant propulsion supplier for decades.”

In addition to its growing defense business, Ursa Major holds true to its origins in space, with a growing satellite propulsion business and continued investment in launch systems in its liquid engines’ business area, and future strategic partners will benefit from fresh, relevant lessons learned rather than legacy processes from decades ago.

The same disciplined planning factors that enabled rapid Hadley iteration are now embedded into long-term production planning. “We’re not building our first manufacturing system,” Spagnoletti notes. “We’re building our next one.”

This shared expertise across product lines creates resilience for all critical national security missions, and our hypersonic propulsion, SRM manufacturing, and space mobility systems are proof of a versatile engineering core that strengthens Ursa Major’s stability and value. Every lesson feeds directly into better engines, better test cycles, and better production systems for all product lines.

Ursa Major enters its second decade with flight-proven engines and motors, a growing backlog, a maturing production architecture, and a board and investor base aligned behind sustainable, long-term growth. It has demonstrated the ability to move quickly, build repeatedly, and scale responsibly.

In an era where threats move faster and launch cadence and munitions use keeps climbing, propulsion partners must be stable, focused, and capable of delivering at scale. Ursa Major is all three. It is flying faster, building smarter, and prepared to stand alongside its partners for the long haul.