It doesn’t make 3D printers, supply additive manufacturing (AM) feedstock, provide design software, or print parts upon request from the general marketplace.But none of this makes Ursa Major any less “an AM company,” according to Chief Operating Officer Nick Doucette: “Additive is one of the core pillars of Ursa Major,” Doucette affirmed.“So if you look at the company like a house, AM might not be the only thing holding everything together, but without it, the roof would fall down.
We view every product through the lens of additive.” This unabashed embrace of AM is noteworthy for at least two reasons.For one thing, as was highlighted at the Additive Manufacturing Strategies (AMS) conference in New York earlier this year, many companies in the space, at this point, view de-emphasizing their use of AM as a necessity in order to attract interest from customers and investors.Years of overpromising and underdelivering by a large proportion of the AM industry have left the addressable market wary of buying what AM companies are selling.
Secondly, in turn, that context makes it all the more impressive that Ursa Major is one of the most successful manufacturing startups, AM-enabled or otherwise, in the U.S.right now.That was certainly already the case going into 2025: the company has made a litany of announcements in the last couple of months that, taken altogether, arguably make the second quarter of this year the most successful one in Ursa Major’s decade-or-so history.
There was the announcement by the Pentagon in early May that Ursa Major’s Draper engine had enabled the Stratolaunch Talon-A test vehicle to reach hypersonic speeds in two separate test flights, one in December 2024 and the other in March 2025.This marked the U.S.’s first successful hypersonic flights since the 1960s, and the nation’s first ever hypersonic flight by a fully autonomous aircraft.Only days before that revelation from the DoD, Ursa Major announced that it had received a $28.6 million contract from the U.S.
Air Force Research Laboratory’s (AFRL’s) Rocket Propulsion Division, which involves the development of the company’s Draper engine for a flight demonstration with a target date of 2027.Meanwhile, both of those announcements came just shy of a month after Ursa Major reached an agreement to sell ten Hadley engines to Sirius Technologies, the U.S.subsidiary of Japan’s Innovative Space Carrier (ISC).
“An especially interesting aspect to the Draper contract with the AFRL is that we’re going to be the prime integrator of the all-up round, as well,” noted the company’s Head of Marketing and Strategic Communications, Savanah Bray.An all-up round is a fully-assembled missile.“For the first time, it’s not just the propulsion, it’s also the vehicle integration.
So I think this will be our initial move towards branching out into other areas of the value chain.” That represents a crucial milestone for Ursa Major’s long-term evolution, according to Doucette: “Since we solved the propulsion problem, we’re getting more questions from our customers along the lines of, well, can you do more?” he explained.“Propulsion is the core and most difficult part of most of the solution sets that are relevant to the verticals we serve.Whether it’s a rocket launch, or building a hypersonic missile, etc., propulsion is usually the cause of most failures, the source of most of the spending, the reason behind most timeline slips.
“If you can perfect propulsion, then, you can certainly imagine yourself either going horizontally into other verticals that need propulsion, or going up and down within a vertical, because you’ve figured out the hardest part.That’s sort of what we’re strategizing behind the scenes, at the moment, is how horizontal and how vertical we want to move, going forward.” Ursa Major’s propulsion system includes the integration of key components such as tanks, thrusters, and avionics.Along those lines, the company’s deal with Sirius Technologies is just as significant as the AFRL contract, in terms of its demonstration that Ursa Major is picking up its momentum in the commercial space industry.
Similarly, in Q1 2025, the company announced a $10-15 million, multi-year contract to build and integrate a propulsion system for a geostationary earth orbit (GEO) satellite for an unnamed customer.That last deal highlights what I think is one of the biggest sources of Ursa Major’s success: its focus on the right applications for the right customers in the right industries.In a recently published report from 3DPrint.com’s sister company, AM Research, we found that the market for metal 3D printing for satellites is expected to grow by over 4x through 2033.
In my view, the fact that Ursa Major, which has been so ahead-of-the-curve on applications like solid rocket motors (SRMs), is bullish on AM for satellites, does much to reinforce the optimistic projections for AM penetration of that particular market.Above all, though, the company seems to owe its success to having the right personnel for the current global business environment.Bray is a perfect example of that: she’s a fairly new hire, coming to the company by way of RTX and, before that, the U.S.
Air Force, where she’s still a reservist.But her grasp of Ursa Major’s mission, its assets, and its corporate culture would lead one to believe that she’s worked at the company since it was founded.That came through most strikingly when I asked her and Doucette if there’s a sense in which the U.S.’s biggest challenges right now aren’t external, but are in fact the challenges resultant from having to transform the very system that we rely on to address external threats: Doucette began, “I think there’s certainly an internal element to the challenge for U.S.
national security that is more prevailing than it was in the past.We were definitely fighting a particular type of conflict in the Middle East for a long time and just adapted to sort of maintaining that status quo.Then things shifted and we realized, the landscape has changed, so we have to change.
It’s been a bit of a shock to the system, that the response mechanism from the industrial base isn’t as fast as it once was.” At that point, Bray jumped right in with her take: “If you look at our past several decades of war-fighting, the trajectory is the emergence of counterinsurgency and then a transition out of counterinsurgency — but in the transition, we didn’t spend time and energy on preparing the industrial base for a pure threat,” she explained.“What you’re seeing with things like Golden Dome and the buildup of hypersonic capabilities is that we’ve finally started to internalize once again that we have prepare for the next generation threat.We can’t just think about the present.” Hiring people like Bray, who understand not just the technologies at hand, but the reason why those technologies are in such demand right now, is what sets Ursa Major apart.
Its knack for developing the AM workforce helped the company land a $4 million grant from JobsOhio last year, enabling Ursa Major to establish a 3D printing research hub in the Youngstown, Ohio area.Stratolaunch’s Talon-A1 prepares for flight powered by Ursa Major’s Hadley engine.Ultimately, the secret behind the company’s attraction of the right talent isn’t as complicated as you might think.
Ursa Major is simply uncompromising in terms of what it looks for.Doucette credits the company’s ability to find the right people to its adherence to three core values — cohesion, conviction, and humility.“About six or seven years ago, Ursa made a very explicit decision to anchor our entire growth trajectory on those three core values,” Doucette told me.
“Once we decided to do that, every aspect of how we recruit, retain, and grow talent was shaped by that value structure.In that context, if you keep using the same methodologies over a long enough time, you essentially filter in exactly the type of person you want in order to make your company be what you want it to be in the future, and ultimately to make your company successful.“I think other companies do very well in hiring what they need, also.
Ursa is just very specific in terms of how we pick our talent, and the underlying value structure we use as our reference point isn’t some flashy new thing — it’s highly simplistic, but, at the same time, it’s extremely hard to stick to.” So, just how big has the company’s 2025 been, thus far? By my estimations, solely in terms of what the company has publicly announced, it has brought in at least $50 million in new contracts, in an environment in which manufacturing companies aren’t very keen to commit to new business.“We can’t show the exact dollar figure,” Bray said, “but your guess of $50 million — I’d say it’s a little higher than that.” She paused, then said, “But yeah, it’s been a pretty good year.” And it’s not even halfway over.Images courtesy of Ursa Major Subscribe to Our Email Newsletter Stay up-to-date on all the latest news from the 3D printing industry and receive information and offers from third party vendors.
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