Bengaluru Startup Othisis Hot-Fires a Fully 3D-Printed Cryogenic Rocket Engine

A two-year-old space startup in Bengaluru has successfully hot-fired a fully cryogenic, 3D-printed rocket engine, putting India's private space sector on the map for reusable propulsion. Othisis Systems completed the test in August 2026, burning liquid oxygen and methane through a 5kN engine built entirely with selective laser melting.

The engine produces 5kN of thrust at a chamber pressure of 35 bar, with a total impulse of 100 kN·s. That performance is meant to power the upper stage of Othisis's reusable vertical take-off and vertical landing rocket, a vehicle the company plans to demonstrate later this year. The engine uses regenerative cooling, with propellant flowing through channels inside the combustion chamber walls before injection. That keeps the metal from melting during sustained burns and is standard practice on modern cryogenic engines, but integrating those channels directly into a 3D-printed structure is what sets the design apart.

Othisis founder Syed Affan started the company in 2023 while still an undergraduate, building the team through the Rocketry India Discord community. The engine was printed at the company's Whitefield facility in Bangalore, where the team also built its test stand from an empty plot of land in roughly three months. The hot-fire campaign ran over 20 cycles and included three failed ignition attempts before the team achieved a sustained burn. That iterative testing validated both the engine design and the in-house control systems.

The choice of liquid oxygen and methane is deliberate. Methane burns cleaner than the kerosene used in many small rockets, leaving less soot to foul the engine between flights. Cleaner combustion also reduces thermal stress on the chamber walls, which matters for a vehicle designed to land and fly again. LOX and methane can theoretically be produced in-situ from carbon dioxide and water, a selling point for future Mars missions, though Othisis is focused on Earth-orbit and suborbital markets first.

The company has reportedly signed memoranda of understanding to carry customer payloads, even though it has yet to fly. If the reusable hopper demo later this year succeeds, Othisis will have compressed the typical rocket development timeline into roughly two years with a bootstrap budget. The achievement shows that 3D printing is no longer a prototyping curiosity for propulsion. It is becoming the fastest path from CAD file to test stand for small teams trying to reach space.