Venus Aerospace Goes Hypersonic

Houston-based Venus Aerospace has outfitted its hypersonic engine system with a new, NASA-supported nozzle design ahead of a key flight demonstration planned for later this summer.

The enhanced nozzle design is part of a technological advancement completed through NASA’s Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program. The SBIR award enabled Venus Aerospace to test new nozzle geometries that shape and direct thrust within its Rotating Detonation Rocket Engine (RDRE), which uses a continuous detonation process to generate thrust. This offers better efficiency, an improved power-to-weight ratio, and greater simplicity over conventional rocket engines. The company plans to integrate the advanced nozzle design into a live engine test later this year, as part of its strategy to demonstrate sustained hypersonic propulsion at scale.

Venus has positioned itself as the first U.S. company to make a scalable and affordable RDRE flight ready. The company’s compact engine design has implications beyond aviation, with potential use in defense and space missions.

“This is just the beginning of what can be achieved with Venus propulsion technology,” said Andrew Duggleby, the CTO of Venus. “We’ve built a compact, high-performance system that unlocks speed, range, and agility across aerospace, defense, and many other applications. And we’re confident in its readiness for flight.”

Venus’s single-engine system architecture addresses multiple limitations associated with traditional high-speed flight platforms, which often require distinct propulsion types for different velocity phases. By contrast, Venus’s compact design offers rocket-like takeoff thrust and jet-like cruise efficiency, streamlining operations while reducing weight and complexity. The system is positioned to support applications including spacecraft landers, low Earth orbit satellites, cargo transfer vehicles, kick-stages, and hypersonic drones and missiles.

Venus’s architecture now incorporates air-breathing capability into the core engine, allowing a single propulsion system to support takeoff, acceleration, and hypersonic cruise without switching engines.

“We’ve already proven our engine outperforms traditional systems on both efficiency and size,” said Sassie Duggleby, the CEO of Venus. “The technology we developed with NASA’s support will now be part of our integrated engine platform—bringing us one step closer to proving that efficient, compact, and affordable hypersonic flight can be scaled.”

Houston-based Venus Aerospace is a developer of propulsion systems that combine detonation-based rocket thrust with air-breathing cruise capability. The company is currently advancing its RDRE-powered Stargazer M4 aircraft, a reusable vehicle capable of reaching Mach 4 speeds.