NordSpace, the Markham-based space tech company that is building launchers and its own Canadian spaceport, has unveiled its Supersonic and Hypersonic Applications Research Platform (SHARP).
SHARP is intended to serve clients wanting to fly high altitude and high speed missions, rather than sub-orbital and orbital space flights that would use NordSpace’s Taiga and Tundra boosters respectively.
“SHARP missions can cover support experiments in biology, microgravity, or space manufacturing — anything needs high altitude, high speed, and a near absence of gravity,” said Rahul Goel, NordSpace’s CEO. “However, the key use case for SHARP in-atmosphere launch technology is defence. It’s a response to the need for sovereign Canadian space capabilities.”
This being said, “these aren’t vehicles for any sort of a strike capability,” Goel explained. “They’re specifically for defence research purposes. A concrete example would be to benchmark Canada’s on-orbit or high-altitude sensing systems that detect a hostile hypersonic launch or other over-the-horizon threats. A SHARP launch from Canada could help ensure that our systems are properly calibrated and able to detect these vehicles on approach in a timely fashion so that we can react accordingly.”
To support its new Supersonic and Hypersonic Applications Research Platform, NordSpace has come up with two new vehicles. The first is the SHARP Arrow. It is a reusable fixed-wing, rocket-powered, uncrewed aircraft that can take off and land on a standard airport runway. “The Arrow has been optimized for cold weather environments, so it can support missions related to Arctic sovereignty,” said Goel. The second vehicle is the SHARP Sabre. It is a modified version of the company’s suborbital Taiga rocket that has been updated to achieve hypersonic speeds with larger payloads on board.
Both of these SHARP vehicles will be powered by NordSpace’s new M2S-HyRock engine. It is a 3D-printed, multi-fuel, multi-purpose liquid regeneratively cooled rocket engine, designed to provide customers with a storable rocket engine. “The M2S-HyRock is derived from our Hadfield rocket engine technology, which we developed in-house and is also 3D-printed,” Goel said.
If all goes to plan, NordSpace hopes to launch its first SHARP Arrow in late 2026 and the first SHARP Sabre a year after that. With any luck, NordSpace will be able to launch the Sabre from its ‘Spaceport Canada’ launch facility in St. Lawrence, Newfoundland. It is also working on other strategic sites closer to Canada’s Arctic for the SHARP vehicles
NordSpace’s push to create direct Canadian access to space is particularly timely given President Trump’s threats to annex the Great White North. That said, Rahul Goel is not surprised that Canada is facing such a threat. “We saw the writing on the wall before all of this began to happen,” he said. “It was unclear what the breaking point might be, but it’s been obvious for quite a number of years that Canada has not been investing as much as it should in its defence capabilities, and that this would be called out at some point in some shape or form.”
At the same time, SHARP is not a new project for NordSpace. “It’s been something that we’ve been planning for quite some time,” said Goel. “Now that we’ve announced SHARP, we are getting a lot of interest in it, especially from Canada’s European allies that are looking to develop a supply chain that’s not reliant on the United States”.
Worth noting: NordSpace’s first Canadian Launch Space Conference is scheduled to be held April 29, 2025 at Ottawa’s Canadian Aviation & Space Museum, and tickets are selling out fast. At the moment they are expecting between 150-170 people. “This is now the second time that we’ve had to increase capacity for this event,” Goel said. “We thought that this would just be a fairly small gathering with some of our key partners, stakeholders and industrial members, but this conference has taken on a life of its own.”
