Stoke Space

Stoke Space (Stoke Space Technologies) is an American launch company founded in 2019 by Andy Lapsa and Tom Feldman and headquartered in Kent, Washington. The company is developing Nova, a medium-lift rocket designed to be 100% fully and rapidly reusable, with the goal of aircraft-like turnaround between flights.

Nova's signature feature is a fully reusable second stage that uses an actively cooled heat shield integrated with a ring of engine thrust chambers, steering by differential throttling rather than gimballing. Its first stage is powered by Zenith, a full-flow staged-combustion engine, and is intended to land back at the launch site or on a drone ship, much like Falcon 9. Nova is targeted to carry roughly 3,000 kg to low Earth orbit.

As of 2026 Stoke Space remains in active development and has not yet reached orbit. It has flown a full-scale reusable upper-stage prototype (Hopper2) on a 2023 hop test, hot-fired its Zenith engine, raised close to a billion dollars across multiple funding rounds, and won a U.S. Space Force National Security Space Launch contract. Maiden orbital flight of Nova from Cape Canaveral Launch Complex 14 is publicly targeted for late 2026.