Skyrora Sheds 44% Off Rocket Engine Weight With 3D Printed Titanium

UK launch company Skyrora has completed a full hot-fire test campaign on a 3.5kN low Earth orbit rocket engine built with a titanium-coated component produced using additive manufacturing. The tests, run at Skyrora's facility in Midlothian, Scotland, validate a manufacturing approach that could reshape how rocket engines are designed and built.

Replacing Nickel With Titanium

The modified engine uses a titanium alloy component in place of a heavier nickel-based alloy. Skyrora deposited the titanium layers using its in-house Skyprint 2 hybrid directed energy deposition (DED) 3D printer. Moving from nickel to titanium resulted in roughly 44 percent less weight for the component, with no loss of structural performance.

Six live firing tests were completed with no damage to the modified part, according to X-ray inspections conducted before and after the campaign. That is a meaningful result. Rocket engines run hot and hard, and a part that survives repeated firings without degradation is exactly what you want before committing it to a flight vehicle.

The MADE-3D Consortium

The work was carried out under the EU-funded MADE-3D program, a Horizon Europe-backed consortium that brought together research organizations and industrial partners to advance multi-material additive manufacturing for space applications. The program explored how different materials can be combined in a single manufacturing process, letting engineers optimize specific sections of a part for strength, weight, or thermal performance.

For rocket engines, that flexibility matters. Combustion chambers, nozzles, and injectors all face different thermal and mechanical loads. A manufacturing method that lets you place the right material in the right place within a single component is a genuine step forward from conventional approaches that require multiple assembled parts.

Jordan McCormick, Design and Test Engineer at Skyrora, noted that moving technologies out of the lab and proving them in real operating conditions is one of the biggest challenges in advanced manufacturing. Completing the hot-fire campaign, he said, marks an important milestone for both Skyrora and the MADE-3D consortium.

What Comes Next

Skyrora is simultaneously developing the Skyrora XL, a three-stage orbital launch vehicle for small satellites, and the Skylark L suborbital vehicle. In 2025, Skyrora became the first UK-based launch vehicle manufacturer to receive a launch operator license from the UK Civil Aviation Authority, permitting suborbital launches from SaxaVord Spaceport in Scotland.

The MADE-3D program has now closed its technical phase, but the manufacturing approach Skyrora validated through hot-fire testing will feed directly into the company's ongoing propulsion development. Other aerospace programs, including NASA's LLAMA project and Launcher's E-2 engine work, have taken similar approaches to metal AM for rocket hardware. Across all of them, the pattern is the same: metal 3D printing is moving from lab demonstrations to flight-qualified hardware that has been fired and requalified.