India's Astrobase Unveils 3D-Printed EVEREST Rocket Engine for 2028 Orbital Flight

Bengaluru-based Astrobase Space Technologies has finished building EVEREST, an 800 kN full-flow staged combustion (FFSC) rocket engine that the company says will power its reusable medium-lift launch vehicle. The milestone makes India the fourth country in the world with private-sector FFSC engine capability, joining the United States and China.

The engine burns liquid oxygen and methane, a combination chosen specifically for reuse. FFSC architecture routes both propellant streams through pre-burners before they enter the main combustion chamber, which yields higher efficiency and chamber pressure than simpler cycles. The tradeoff is complexity: only a handful of companies globally have made the design work.

Astrobase co-founder Neeraj Khandelwal said the engine is rated for 800 kN of thrust with a specific impulse of roughly 340 seconds and a throttle range of 50% to 110%. Those numbers put it in the same class as engines that power medium-lift launchers. The company plans to build up to 50 engines per year once production is fully ramped, with an initial target of 100 tonnes of annual launch capacity and a longer-term goal exceeding 1,000 tonnes.

The manufacturing story is where 3D printing becomes central. Astrobase operates what it describes as India's largest industrial 3D printer at its Bengaluru facility, using laser powder bed fusion to produce complex engine components that would be difficult or impossible to make through conventional machining. The company says additive manufacturing lets it iterate faster and consolidate parts that would otherwise require multi-piece assemblies.

Several subsystems have already been tested, and a full-engine hot-fire campaign is planned for the coming months at the company's test facility in Anantapur, Andhra Pradesh. Before attempting orbital flight, Astrobase intends to run about 20 engines through its test program. That redundancy is deliberate: if one engine fails during development, the program does not stall waiting for a replacement.

The timeline is aggressive. Astrobase is targeting first orbital launch by December 2028, which would put it among the faster private space programs to move from engine completion to flight. The company received support from IN-SPACe's Technology Adoption Fund, India's regulatory body for private space activity, signaling official backing for its indigenous propulsion approach.

The 21.5-acre test site in Andhra Pradesh is purpose-built for continuous cryogenic testing, and the company's 46,000 square foot assembly factory in Bengaluru handles integration and subsystem validation. That vertical integration is a conscious strategy: Astrobase wants to keep design authority, manufacturing knowledge, and test data in-house rather than spread it across suppliers.

Reusability is the through-line of the program. EVEREST is designed for more than 50 flights, and the company's longer-term vision includes a launch-on-demand capability that could support dedicated missions within 15 days of a customer request. Those targets have not yet been demonstrated, but the engine completion marks the point where theoretical capability starts turning into hardware that can actually be tested.

The global context matters here. SpaceX's Raptor and Stoke Space's engines are the best-known Western examples of operational FFSC cycles, while Land Space in China has also demonstrated the architecture. Astrobase's entry means India is no longer dependent on foreign propulsion for medium-lift missions, and it opens the door to exporting launch services as the global satellite constellation market grows.