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Stoke Space is building fully reusable rockets designed to launch satellites and return both stages to Earth for quick reuse.
Stoke Space is a rocket company building reusable launch vehicles for the satellite industry. Its customers are the companies, governments, and research groups that need to put things into orbit — mostly small and medium satellites that currently have limited, expensive options. Stoke's pitch is that both the booster and the upper stage of its rocket, called Nova, will fly back to Earth and land, then launch again quickly. Most rockets today throw the upper stage away after one use, so making that piece reusable too is the hard part Stoke is trying to solve.
The key technical bet is the second stage. Stoke has designed it with a ring of engines around a heat-shielded base — a bit like a saucer — so it can survive reentry and land vertically instead of burning up. The first stage uses a full cluster of engines and returns like other reusable boosters. If this works as planned, Stoke aims to turn around a rocket in a matter of days rather than months, which would make launches cheaper and more frequent. Stoke is private and backed by venture investors, including Breakthrough Energy and others, and it raised a large funding round in 2025 that valued it at several billion dollars. It is one of a small group of startups chasing the reusable-rocket prize long dominated by SpaceX (private) and increasingly pursued by Blue Origin (private) and Rocket Lab. Stoke's founders are former Blue Origin engineers, which shaped its engineering-first culture.
Nova is aimed at the medium-lift market, carrying a few tons to low Earth orbit — enough for many satellite constellations and defense missions. The company has been test-firing engines and building out its launch site at Cape Canaveral. The big risks are obvious: rockets are brutally hard, and a reusable upper stage has never been done at scale. If Stoke pulls it off, it becomes a serious player in the launch business; if not, the money and years spent chasing the idea could vanish.
Saved answer · last researched 4 Nov 2026