LEAP Space reveals 3D printed Serrano engine for its Bighorn launch vehicle

LEAP Space unveiled the Serrano engine, the first major hardware piece of its Bighorn launch vehicle build. The Colorado-based space logistics and launch vehicle company said Serrano builds on the same core technology as its flight-proven Anaheim engine at a larger size.

This was done using large-scale direct metal laser sintering (DMLS, the term EOS uses for its metal LPBF technology) to print the thrust chamber as a single part, which the company says helps it iterate and produce quickly in line with its design and testing process.

Serrano is a variant of LEAP’s proprietary Cayenne propulsion system, a dual-mode LOX/methane engine architecture that uses additive manufacturing to enable faster test-and-learn cycles and rapid production. The approach fits LEAP’s wider design philosophy of stripping complexity out of its vehicles: Bighorn is built with 90% fewer parts than conventional launch vehicles, aimed at high cadence, low-cost manufacturing at scale.

LEAP’s current vehicle lineup includes Bullfrog, a single-engine, fully reusable vehicle for point-to-point logistics, hypersonic testing, and microgravity research, which completed its first flight in May 2026; and Bighorn, a mass-producible, transportable launch vehicle targeting orbital, point-to-point, contested logistics, and defense missions, with a planned production rate of more than 30 units a year per manufacturing line.

LEAP’s point-to-point logistics service is aimed at national security and commercial payloads. It is capable of global delivery in under 45 minutes. With Serrano now printed, the next steps are integration and testing on the way to the engine powering Bighorn on missions to, through, and from space.