Othisis Systems: The Bengaluru Startup Building 3D-Printed Methalox Engines and Reusable Rockets in India

India’s private space industry is entering a stage in which startups are attempting technologies that only a few years ago remained largely within government programmes or major international aerospace companies. Bengaluru-based Othisis Systems belongs to this new generation. The young company is developing cryogenic rocket propulsion, flight computers, reusable vertical-takeoff-and-landing vehicles and, ultimately, an orbital launch system designed around recovery and repeated use.

Othisis attracted wider attention in August 2026 after successfully hot-firing a 5-kilonewton liquid-oxygen-and-methane rocket engine manufactured extensively through metal additive manufacturing. The engine produced a reported total impulse of 100 kN·s, incorporates regenerative cooling and uses a modular pintle injector. The company plans to use the propulsion technology first in a reusable flight demonstrator and later within its broader launch-vehicle programme.

The engine firing remains a ground-test milestone rather than proof of an operational reusable rocket. Othisis has not yet demonstrated an orbital launch, booster recovery or operational satellite-launch service. What makes the company noteworthy at this stage is the amount of enabling technology it is attempting to develop domestically: propulsion hardware, additive manufacturing, cryogenic fluid systems, avionics, control electronics, test infrastructure and eventually propulsive landing.

The Company Began as a Rocketry Community

Othisis did not begin with an established aerospace factory or a conventional corporate research programme. Its roots go back to June 2023, when a Discord community called Rocketry India brought together students and amateur rocket enthusiasts interested in propulsion, vehicle design and space technology. Othisis says the community eventually grew beyond 1,000 participants and became the foundation from which its initial engineering team emerged.

Founder Syed Affan, who studied at Vellore Institute of Technology, was closely associated with building the Rocketry India community before developing Othisis into a company. His public profile and company material describe the venture as having evolved while he was still pursuing his undergraduate studies.

The company’s public history says Othisis incorporated in March 2024. Corporate records provide additional detail: Othisis Systems (OPC) Private Limited was incorporated in Tamil Nadu on March 14, 2024. A newer entity, Othisis Systems and Innovations Private Limited, was incorporated in Karnataka on September 13, 2025, with Syed Affan and Hedayeth listed as directors. The company’s current website uses the latter name in its footer and gives a Bengaluru-area operating address.

This corporate evolution matters because Othisis has moved rapidly from an amateur and student-oriented rocketry network towards a formal aerospace startup. Its LinkedIn profile currently identifies Bengaluru as its headquarters and describes a workforce in the 11–50 employee range, although such platform figures should be treated as company-profile information rather than an independently audited headcount.

Jericho: The First Flight

Before developing cryogenic engines, Othisis began by building relatively modest high-powered rockets. Its first major vehicle was Jericho, launched in December 2023.

Jericho used an I-class motor and targeted an altitude of one kilometre. According to Othisis’s published project data, the rocket reached 850.66 metres and a maximum speed of approximately Mach 0.536. The flight provided the young team with practical experience in aerodynamics, structural design, simulations, propulsion integration and launch operations.

The vehicle was far removed from an orbital rocket, but that was precisely its purpose. Developing reusable space transportation requires competence across many smaller engineering problems, and experimental sounding rockets provide a comparatively inexpensive way to begin learning how structures, electronics, propulsion and recovery systems behave outside simulations.

MONU: Learning to Build Rocket Motors

The next stage focused on propulsion. In April 2024, Othisis developed MONU v1, an L-class solid rocket motor using an aluminium casing, graphite nozzle and KNDX propellant. The test failed after cracks formed in the graphite nozzle, which the company attributed to manufacturing defects.

Instead of abandoning the design, the team produced MONU v2 the following month. The revised motor completed a successful test and generated a company-reported 4,000 newton-seconds of total impulse over a 1.9-second burn. Othisis classifies it as an L2000 motor.

The progression from MONU v1 to v2 illustrates an important part of rocket development that often receives less attention than successful launches. Propulsion engineering advances through repeated cycles of fabrication, failure analysis, redesign and testing. Nozzle erosion, ignition problems, thermal stress, valve behaviour and combustion instability must all be understood before a propulsion system becomes reliable enough for flight.

FONU: Building Avionics in India

Othisis simultaneously started developing its own avionics. The FONU flight computer, completed for the company’s 2024 programme, uses an ESP32 architecture and combines an inertial measurement unit, barometric sensing, GPS, onboard data storage and LoRa telemetry.

Its published hardware includes a BMI088 inertial sensor, BMP180 barometer and u-blox M10 GPS module. The software incorporates a finite-state-machine architecture that identifies different phases of flight and manages functions such as recovery deployment.

Developing avionics internally becomes increasingly important as Othisis moves towards reusable vehicles. A conventional experimental rocket can follow a largely ballistic trajectory after engine shutdown. A vertical-landing vehicle must continuously estimate its position, velocity and orientation and then command propulsion and control systems quickly enough to reach a landing point safely.

Propulsive recovery therefore depends as much on software, sensors and control logic as it does on the rocket engine itself.

SONUS Combined the Early Technologies

In December 2024, Othisis flew SONUS, an experimental rocket intended to bring several of its developing technologies together.

The vehicle incorporated the MONU propulsion system and FONU flight computer. Othisis reports that SONUS reached 1.83 kilometres in altitude and approximately Mach 0.8, slightly below its two-kilometre target but significantly higher and faster than Jericho.

SONUS represented a shift from demonstrating individual components towards integrated vehicle testing. Propulsion, telemetry, avionics and recovery hardware had to operate together during an actual flight, providing the team with data that laboratory testing alone could not produce.

The next technological jump, however, would be considerably greater.

From Solid Rockets to Cryogenic Methalox Propulsion

Othisis subsequently began developing a liquid-propellant engine using liquid oxygen and liquid methane, commonly called methalox.

Both propellants must remain at cryogenic temperatures. This introduces an entirely different level of engineering complexity compared with a solid motor because the vehicle requires insulated tanks, valves, regulators or pumps, feed lines, injectors, ignition systems and precise propellant-management hardware.

Methane nevertheless offers attractive characteristics for reusable launch vehicles. It burns more cleanly than kerosene-based rocket propellants and leaves relatively little carbonaceous residue inside combustion chambers and associated hardware. Cleaner combustion can potentially reduce inspection and refurbishment requirements between flights, an important consideration when a launch vehicle must operate repeatedly.

The trade-off is additional complexity. Methane has lower density than kerosene and requires cryogenic storage, which can lead to larger tanks and more demanding ground infrastructure. Othisis therefore chose a propulsion technology well suited to its long-term reusable ambitions but substantially more difficult than the solid motors with which the team began.

The 3D-Printed Cryogenic Engine

The central achievement of Othisis’s current programme is its 5-kN cryogenic methalox engine.

The company says the engine employs a combustion chamber manufactured through Selective Laser Melting, or SLM, together with an injector developed in-house. Othisis has publicly described the engine more broadly as fully additively manufactured.

SLM uses a high-powered laser to selectively melt extremely thin layers of metal powder according to a digital design. By repeating the process layer after layer, manufacturers can produce shapes that would be difficult or impossible to machine conventionally.

Rocket engines benefit particularly from this capability because combustion chambers can contain intricate internal passages for cooling. Additive manufacturing can also reduce the number of separate components and welded joints required to construct the engine, potentially shortening manufacturing and development cycles.

The technology does not automatically make an engine cheaper or more reliable. Printed components still require material qualification, dimensional inspection, post-processing and extensive testing. Its major advantage during development is the ability to integrate complex geometry and iterate designs relatively rapidly.

Regenerative Cooling Keeps the Engine Alive

Temperatures inside a rocket combustion chamber can exceed the limits of the metal surrounding it. Othisis therefore uses regenerative cooling to protect the engine.

In a regeneratively cooled engine, one of the cryogenic propellants passes through small channels surrounding the combustion chamber before reaching the injector. The propellant absorbs heat from the chamber walls, keeping the structure below destructive temperatures while simultaneously warming the propellant before combustion.

Company-linked technical reporting says Othisis has also experimented with film cooling, in which a protective layer of relatively cool propellant forms near parts of the chamber wall. Its recent test campaign has therefore involved more than simply proving ignition; thermal management represents one of the major technologies being developed for sustained and eventually reusable operation.

A Modular Pintle Injector

Another interesting feature is the engine’s pintle injector architecture. Rather than using a large plate filled with hundreds of fixed injector elements, a pintle injector introduces propellants through a comparatively compact central arrangement.

Othisis says its design is modular and allows aspects of the engine’s operating point to change through replacement of part of the injector rather than redesigning the entire combustion chamber. Company-linked technical descriptions place the nominal design at 5 kN of thrust and approximately 35 bar chamber pressure.

Pintle injectors have attracted interest for reusable and experimental propulsion because they can offer relatively straightforward construction and useful operating flexibility. Whether the Othisis implementation ultimately achieves the throttling range and restart capability required for reusable flight will depend on future testing.

Building Its Own Test Facility

The engine itself represents only part of the engineering effort. Othisis also constructed a cryogenic test facility near Bengaluru, including propellant plumbing, feed systems, valves, control electronics and data-acquisition equipment.

The company says it developed the facility from an empty site in roughly three months. During the process, the team had to qualify cryogenic components and develop much of the control electronics and firmware internally.

Before achieving its successful sustained burn, Othisis reported completing more than 20 flow and test cycles and encountering several unsuccessful ignition attempts. Such iterative testing is particularly important for a small startup because cryogenic propulsion problems frequently emerge from the interaction of valves, plumbing, ignition timing and propellant conditions rather than from the combustion chamber alone.

Building its own test infrastructure also gives Othisis a potentially valuable development advantage. Instead of depending on an external facility for every modification, engineers can change hardware, conduct another test and analyse the results in relatively short cycles.

The August 2026 Hot-Fire Milestone

The programme reached its most important milestone so far in August 2026, when Othisis successfully completed the hot-fire campaign of its cryogenic engine.

The company reported a 5-kN nominal thrust rating and 100 kN·s total impulse for the demonstrated engine. Earlier in the campaign, it had also reported a regenerative- and film-cooled firing producing approximately 4.5 kN while operating under reduced conditions for system validation.

The distinction is important. The milestone proves that Othisis has progressed from drawings and manufactured hardware to an operating cryogenic combustion system. It does not yet prove full-duration reusable operation, repeated restart capability, vertical landing or orbital performance.

Those are the next layers of the challenge.

The Reusable Hopper Comes First

Rather than immediately attempting an orbital launch, Othisis plans to place the propulsion technology aboard a VTVL hopper, a small reusable demonstrator designed to take off vertically, manoeuvre and land under rocket power.

The company has indicated that it wants to attempt the first hopper flight during 2026. The schedule remains a company target and could change as ground testing, vehicle integration and regulatory requirements progress.

A successful hopper would represent a fundamentally different achievement from the engine hot-fire. The vehicle would need to combine propulsion with tanks, structural systems, navigation, guidance, flight-control software and a landing system capable of controlling the rocket during its final descent.

Such tests normally begin at low altitude because engineers need to validate control behaviour before attempting more energetic flights.

Landing a Rocket Is Harder Than Launching One

Launching a small rocket mainly requires producing enough stable thrust and maintaining an acceptable trajectory. Landing the same vehicle vertically introduces a much harder control problem.

The onboard computer must continually estimate altitude, velocity, orientation and remaining propellant. It must then determine the correct thrust and attitude commands while compensating for wind, engine variations and sensor errors.

The engine must also operate predictably at the thrust levels required near touchdown. Too much thrust can cause the vehicle to climb again, while too little can result in a hard impact. Reliable ignition, control authority and rapid response are therefore central to any genuine VTVL system.

Othisis’s hopper programme will consequently provide a much clearer test of its reusable-rocket ambitions than the present stationary engine firing.

The Longer-Term Orbital Launcher

Beyond the hopper, Othisis has begun outlining plans for an orbital-class reusable launch vehicle. Company-linked technical reporting in August 2026 described a proposed vehicle capable of carrying as much as 1,500 kilograms to a 500-kilometre Low Earth orbit, with a first stage designed to return to the launch site through propulsive landing. A first orbital attempt has been discussed for 2028.

These specifications should currently be treated as a development roadmap rather than established launch capability. Othisis has not yet published a mature, independently verified launch-vehicle configuration comparable with an operational launcher, and many design, testing, financing and regulatory stages remain ahead.

The company has also described the 5-kN propulsion platform in connection with both its reusable demonstrator and its future orbital vehicle. Its final role may evolve as the launcher architecture matures.

Moving from a 5-kN test engine to an orbital system capable of carrying a 1.5-tonne payload represents an enormous increase in complexity. Higher-thrust propulsion, large cryogenic tanks, staging, aerodynamics, structural qualification, range safety, guidance and thousands of component interactions must all work reliably.

Othisis Says It Has Payload Interest

Othisis has stated through company-associated reports that it has signed memoranda of understanding relating to future payload launches. Public reporting has not provided enough detail to independently establish the number, value or binding commercial status of these agreements.

This distinction matters because an MoU represents interest or planned cooperation rather than the same thing as a confirmed operational launch contract. Othisis must first prove its vehicle, obtain the necessary authorisations and demonstrate sufficient reliability before commercial satellite launches become possible.

The company has also been described in company-linked material as being onboarded with IN-SPACe, although a specific public authorisation for an Othisis orbital launch was not identifiable in the material reviewed for this article. Any actual launch from Indian territory would fall under India’s space-authorisation framework.

India’s Regulatory Framework for Private Rockets

Private launch vehicles in India operate within the framework established by the Indian Space Policy 2023 and IN-SPACe. The agency promotes, enables, authorises and supervises private space activity, including the construction and operation of launch vehicles and launch facilities.

IN-SPACe’s 2026 guidelines also make an important distinction for experimental suborbital vehicles. Launches with a combined lift-off impulse of 40,960 newton-seconds or more require IN-SPACe authorisation, while lower-power experimental rockets fall under advisory guidelines.

An eventual Othisis orbital launcher would consequently require a much broader set of approvals covering the launch vehicle, launch operation, safety, liability and supporting infrastructure. Building the rocket represents only one part of becoming a commercial launch operator.

Methalox and Reusability Fit India’s Technology Roadmap

Othisis’s chosen technical direction is closely aligned with technologies that IN-SPACe considers important for the future of India’s space industry.

IN-SPACe’s technology roadmap specifically identifies LOX-methane propulsion and recoverable or reusable launch vehicles among technologies expected to gain importance over the coming decade. The roadmap also highlights areas such as in-orbit servicing, space robotics and active debris removal as India develops a broader private space ecosystem.

IN-SPACe has separately identified private-sector development of small launch vehicles, suborbital vehicles and launch-on-demand services as opportunities within India’s evolving launch industry.

Othisis therefore operates in a technology space that Indian policy explicitly wants private industry to develop.

A Small Team Building Across Several Engineering Disciplines

One of Othisis’s defining characteristics is the breadth of systems it is attempting to develop internally. Its public work now spans solid propulsion, cryogenic propulsion, additive manufacturing, avionics, telemetry, embedded software, ground infrastructure and reusable-flight systems.

This level of vertical integration creates both an opportunity and a risk. Owning critical subsystems can allow rapid iteration and reduce reliance on foreign or external suppliers. It can also stretch a young company’s engineering and financial resources because each additional subsystem requires specialists, facilities, qualification and testing.

Othisis appears to be addressing that challenge with a relatively small engineering organisation. Its public recruitment has sought engineers in propulsion, mechanical design, electronics, embedded systems and controls, illustrating how the startup is moving beyond its original student-community structure.

The Funding Picture

The company’s founder has publicly described Othisis as a funded space-technology startup and stated that the company had previously remained more than 90 percent bootstrapped during much of its early development.

However, publicly accessible information reviewed for this article does not provide a confirmed funding amount, valuation or named institutional investor for a conventional disclosed funding round. It would therefore be premature to attach a specific fundraising figure to the company without further documentation.

This is an important distinction because Othisis remains at a capital-intensive stage. Moving from a small propulsion test programme to reusable flight demonstrations and eventually an orbital launcher will require considerably more expenditure on engines, vehicles, ground facilities, testing, personnel and regulatory compliance.

What Othisis Has Actually Demonstrated

Othisis has already demonstrated several pieces of real hardware. Jericho and SONUS completed experimental rocket flights, MONU v2 successfully demonstrated a solid motor, FONU provided an indigenous avionics platform and the company has now achieved sustained combustion with a cryogenic methalox engine.

The August 2026 engine test is the most technically important achievement so far because cryogenic liquid propulsion requires a substantially more complex system than the company’s earlier solid motors.

The startup has also created a functioning test environment for cryogenic propulsion and performed repeated flow and ignition trials, giving the team an engineering foundation for further development.

These achievements justify viewing Othisis as more than a concept-stage rocket startup.

What Has Not Yet Been Demonstrated

The company’s larger ambitions still remain ahead. Othisis has not yet demonstrated an autonomous propulsive landing, reusable hopper flight, orbital rocket, stage recovery, 1,500-kilogram payload capability or commercial satellite launch.

Its claims of eventually building a fully reusable rocket must therefore remain framed as development goals until flight testing validates them.

This does not diminish the significance of the engine programme. Aerospace development advances through successive technology demonstrations. The important question is whether Othisis can move methodically from stationary propulsion testing to controlled flight and then repeat that success reliably.

The Make in India Significance

Othisis is particularly interesting from a Make in India perspective because its programme involves more than assembling imported systems into an Indian rocket.

The startup is attempting to build core propulsion technology in India, manufacture complex engine hardware through metal additive processes, develop its own injector and control electronics, build its own test facility and write the software required for future reusable-flight operations.

Each of these areas has potential value beyond one company. Cryogenic valves, precision machining, high-temperature alloys, metal 3D printing, sensors, embedded electronics and flight-control software form part of a wider aerospace supply chain.

If young Indian launch companies can create sustained domestic demand for these technologies, the benefits could spread through specialist manufacturers and engineering firms that serve multiple space and defence programmes.

From College Rocketry to a Serious Space Programme

The most striking aspect of Othisis may be the speed of its transition. In 2023, its foundations were an online community of students and rocketry enthusiasts. By the end of that year, the team had flown Jericho. During 2024 it developed solid motors, avionics and SONUS, while subsequent work moved towards cryogenic propulsion. By 2026, the startup had built a dedicated test facility and fired an additively manufactured methalox engine.

That trajectory does not guarantee commercial success. Rocket companies face unusually high technical and financial failure rates, and the jump from experimental hardware to reliable launch services is enormous.

Nevertheless, Othisis has already demonstrated one characteristic essential to any aerospace venture: the willingness to move repeatedly from design to hardware and from hardware to testing.

The Next Milestone Will Matter More Than the Last

The 5-kN engine test has established that Othisis can build and operate a cryogenic combustion system. The next milestone will show whether that capability can become part of a controlled flying machine.

A successful VTVL hopper would validate several technologies simultaneously, including propulsion integration, vehicle guidance, navigation, control, structural behaviour and landing logic. Repeating the flight with the same vehicle would provide the first meaningful indication that Othisis is progressing towards genuine reusability.

Only after those steps will the much larger orbital-launch ambition become easier to assess.

For now, Othisis represents one of the more unusual stories emerging from India’s private space sector: a rocket community formed by students that evolved into a Bengaluru aerospace startup developing its own cryogenic engine and attempting to build rockets that return to the ground under power.

The path from a Discord server to an orbital reusable launch vehicle remains extremely long. Yet Othisis has already crossed an important boundary by converting its ambitions into functioning propulsion hardware.

Its next task is the one that will determine whether the programme can move from promising engineering to reusable flight: putting that Indian-built methalox engine inside a vehicle, lifting it from the ground and bringing the rocket safely back.

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