What EXOS Actually Built in 2025
2025 was a year of execution for EXOS.
The focus throughout the year was on advancing reusable flight capability, strengthening suborbital testing infrastructure, and building flight heritage across critical systems. Each milestone contributed to greater technical readiness, operational maturity, and long-term scalability.
Here’s what that progress looked like.
Reusable Flight as a Foundation
At the core of EXOS’s work in 2025 was continued development of reusable, recoverable flight systems.
Rather than treating launches as one-time events, EXOS designs for iteration. Hardware recovery enables inspection, refinement, and reuse. Operational lessons are gathered through real flight experience and applied directly to subsequent missions.
This approach shortens learning cycles, reduces technical risk, and supports more capital-efficient progress as systems mature.
Reusable suborbital flight is not just access to space. It is a foundation for building confidence in systems that must ultimately perform at much higher stakes.
Advancing Suborbital as a Testbed
Throughout 2025, EXOS continued to position suborbital flight as a practical validation layer for orbital-class technologies.
Our platforms support:
Propulsion system testing in relevant flight environments
Guidance, navigation, and control validation
Recovery operations and operational readiness
Microgravity and payload experimentation
Hypersonic and defense-adjacent applications
This testbed capability allows customers and partners to de-risk systems earlier, iterate faster, and move forward with greater confidence before committing to orbital deployment.
Integrated Structures with Real Lunar Flight Heritage
A significant milestone in 2025 was the continued advancement of composite pressurized structures through EXOS’s partner - Scorpius Space Company.
Scorpius’ Type V linerless composite tanks flew on the Athena Lunar Lander as part of the IM-2 mission, which successfully landed on the Moon in 2025. These tanks are now on the lunar surface, representing real operational performance of next-generation pressurized structures in a lunar environment.
This flight heritage matters. Pressurized structures require validation across a wide range of operating conditions, and lunar flight heritage is a meaningful validation signal that complements ground-based testing.
Combined with reusable flight platforms, these flight-proven structures strengthen EXOS’s role in building integrated space infrastructure rather than standalone systems.
Government and Defense Alignment
In parallel, EXOS continued to advance work aligned with government and defense priorities.
These efforts support rapid testing, reusable systems, and technologies relevant to hypersonic development and national security applications. Just as importantly, they provide continuous feedback that informs vehicle design, operations, and future capability expansion.
In 2025, EXOS was awarded a $1.9M SBIR Phase II contract from the U.S. Air Force to design, fabricate, and hover test its Hybrid Vehicle Rocket with RDRE (HVRR). The program integrates a government-furnished Rotating Detonation Rocket Engine (RDRE) provided by a partner contractor, advancing propulsion technology while supporting reusable suborbital testing services.
This effort supports both orbital launch development and reentry data collection, reinforcing EXOS’s role as a reusable suborbital platform for propulsion validation, system integration, and defense-relevant experimentation.
Together, this work reinforces EXOS’s position at the intersection of commercial innovation and government mission needs..
Building Toward What Comes Next
The progress made in 2025 was foundational.
The systems, data, and operational experience developed this year are not endpoints. They are inputs into expanded cadence, broader applications, and deeper integration across launch, testing, and structures.
At this stage, progress is measured by readiness and repeatability. By those measures, 2025 moved EXOS forward in meaningful ways.
Looking Ahead
As EXOS moves into 2026, the transition from foundation to acceleration creates a focused window for execution, integration, and strategic alignment.
EXOS enters the year with:
Reusable, recoverable flight capability
A growing role as a suborbital testbed
Composite pressurized structures with lunar flight heritage
Continued alignment with commercial and defense stakeholders
Together, these elements position EXOS to scale responsibly, with disciplined progression and capital efficiency at the core.
The foundation is in place, and the work continues.