HANBIT (한빛) — South Korea

Innospace is a South Korean company which, like Germany’s HyImpulse, France’s HyPrSpace, Canada’s Reaction Dynamics, Taiwan’s TiSpace, America’s Vaya, and Australia’s Gilmour, hopes to build an orbital rocket using a hybrid engine, in which fulid oxidizer reacts with a core of solid propellant. In discussing those other rockets, I have noted that hybrid engines are generally a sign of an outfit that isn’t advanced enough to handle a real cryogenic engine, and is always going to be compromised in performance. But this rocket might arguably be more of a real contender than the others, even though Gilmour was the first to attempt a launch, because unlike the others they use liquid oxygen instead of a room-temperature oxidizer such as hydrogen peroxide or nitrous oxide. This should translate into them having a higher specific impulse, but it’s hard to compare when companies like Gilmour don’t even reveal their specific impulse numbers. Even with that advantage it sounds like the performance they’ve achieved is no better than a typical solid-fuel rocket.

Their first orbital rocket is called the Hanbit-Nano. (The name Hanbit could be literally translated as “big light” or “one light”, but it doesn’t seem to be considered a real word as far as I can tell, just a brand name.) They plan to have successor variations called Hanbit-Micro and Hanbit-Mini, giving the impression that they expect to someday do some big stuff. The Micro is basically the same size as the Nano, with only the upper stage(s) upgraded. The Mini would have a fat booster with nine Nano/Micro engines in it, and would still not qualify as a midsize rocket. The Nano sits right at the bottom of the rocket size hierarchy, aiming to lift ninety kilograms to sun-synchronous orbit.

The Nano has a choice of two upper stages: the “Hyper” with a small hybrid motor, or the “LiMER” with a methalox engine. I’m not sure if the latter genuinely exists yet. For the Micro they plan to give the second stage two of the Hyper motors, rougly doubling its payload capacity, and optionally add a kick stage.

They did a single test launch of a booster stage in 2023. It went up from the Alcântara Space Center in Brazil, where the Brazilian space program had tried to develop a large solid rocket, but then went into a long hiatus after a deadly explosion. The stage flew its planned route without a hitch. The first launch of the complete Nano was in late 2025 from the same site, with a few cubesats on board. The flight went okay for about two minutes, then they reported an anomaly and halted their livestream.&ensp:Replays showed a fireball visible for two frames, which is odd as hybrids are not supposed to explode.

Later on they plan to also try launches from Andøya Spaceport in Norway, which as yet has only launched suborbital stuff, and from Arnhem Space Centre in Australia, which is only a few years old and has only seen three suborbital flights. Someday they might get to launch from South Korea’s own launch site, the Naro Space Center.

Hanbit-Nano: mass unknown, diam 1.4 m, thrust 245 kN, imp 2.86 km/s, hybrid (paraffin and lox), payload ~0.1 t, cost unknown, record 0/1/0 through 2025