India's first privately built FFSC rocket engine unveiled by Bengaluru's Astrobase

Bengaluru-based Astrobase Space Technologies has unveiled EVEREST, India's first privately built full-flow staged combustion (FFSC) rocket engine — an 800 kN design that burns liquid oxygen and methane. With the unveiling on August 7, India became the fourth nation to possess FFSC engine technology, after Russia, the United States and China.

In an FFSC engine, both the fuel and the oxidiser pass through separate pre-burners — small combustion units that drive the engine's pumps — before entering the main combustion chamber, so that all of the propellant contributes to thrust. Neeraj Khandelwal, co-founder and CEO of Astrobase, said the architecture lets the turbopumps run more efficiently, enables precise throttle control and suits reusable launch systems, while the cleaner-burning LOX-methane pairing can simplify refurbishment and speed up turnaround between missions.

The cycle is significantly more complex to design than conventional engines. Globally, only three commercial companies have developed high-thrust FFSC engines — SpaceX and Stoke Space in the US and LandSpace in China — and only SpaceX's Raptor is operational. Astrobase, founded in 2024 by Khandelwal and former ISRO scientist Devakumar Thammisetty, is the first Indian company to build one, and EVEREST is also the first high-thrust LOX-methane engine built in India. The company says the engine unlocks reusable launch capability of up to 30 tonnes to low Earth orbit.

EVEREST was built using advanced manufacturing, including India's largest industrial 3D printer, and its subsystems have been tested so far. A fully integrated hot-fire campaign is planned in the coming months at the company's test facility in Anantapur, Andhra Pradesh, with a first flight targeted for December 2028. Astrobase plans to build and test about 20 engines before its first orbital flight, and has been selected under IN-SPACe's Technology Adoption Fund for the engine's development.