The Exploration Company Licenses LEAP 71's Noyron RP for Next-Gen Rocket Engines

European space company The Exploration Company (TEC) has signed a five-year agreement to license LEAP 71's Noyron RP Large Computation Model for the development of next-generation rocket engines.

Computational Engineering for Space

The partnership, announced March 24, 2026, builds on a collaboration that began in 2023. The Noyron RP technology encodes first-principles physics, engineering logic, production constraints, and empirical feedback into a coherent system for generating rocket engine designs. It autonomously generates components from abstract performance specifications to manufacturable hardware.

TEC is developing a portfolio of spacecraft and propulsion systems, including the Nyx reusable orbital resupply capsule and the Typhoon, a high-thrust, full-flow staged combustion rocket engine. Noyron RP will be integrated into TEC's internal computational engineering program.

Accelerating Design Iteration

TEC was founded on agility, building and testing fast while staying rigorous on engineering validation, said Hélène Huby, Founder and CEO of TEC. Under this agreement, we will use Noyron RP for propulsion component geometry generation as part of our internal computational engineering program. The goal is to broaden the design space we can explore and support faster iteration across successive test campaigns.

Most space companies still rely on labour-intensive geometric design workflows, explained Josefine Lissner, Co-Founder and CEO of LEAP 71. Noyron enables engineers to adopt a code-first, high-level approach. Over the past two years, we have validated Noyron RP by hot-firing different rocket engine architectures at a cadence of weeks.

Recent Milestones

Earlier this month, LEAP 71 unveiled an additively manufactured aerospike rocket engine that can generate 200 kN (20 tons) of thrust, developed in partnership with HBD. The technology is proving that AI-driven design can produce production-ready rocket components in weeks rather than months.