Stellar Alpina has unveiled Monarch, an orbital transportation spacecraft, and Morpho, a lunar lander derived from the same architecture. Announced on November 2, 2026, the designs extend the Swiss company’s work on rotating detonation rocket engines into complete spacecraft for orbital transfers and lunar delivery.
The company describes its spacecraft development program as a family of vehicles powered by detonative propulsion. Monarch is intended to transport payloads between orbits. Morpho applies the architecture to delivery from lunar orbit to the Moon’s surface.
Monarch’s Planned Transportation Capability
According to specifications discussed in Payload’s interview with the company, Monarch targets a fully fueled mass of 1,000 kilograms and a payload capacity of 200 kilograms. Its design calls for up to 6,000 meters per second of total velocity change, commonly called delta-v.
Delta-v describes the cumulative changes in velocity a spacecraft can produce with its propulsion system. Those maneuvers allow a vehicle to change its orbit and carry a payload toward another destination. The figure describes a maneuvering budget rather than the spacecraft’s cruising speed.
Monarch’s engines are being developed to use hydrogen peroxide and propane. The spacecraft is intended to work with different launch vehicles. Cofounder Victor Elliesen said the company aims to offer transportation as a service, potentially charging customers according to the velocity change used during a mission.
Stellar Alpina targets an orbital demonstration by 2029, subject to launch availability.
A Shared Architecture for Lunar Delivery
Morpho is designed to deliver up to 50 kilograms of payload to the lunar surface. It would use an upgraded version of Monarch’s architecture for smaller lunar missions.
The company’s development updates describe propulsion testing across 23 engine configurations, with 150 tests reported in its recent campaign. The team varied combustion chambers and tested hardware to destruction to study the operating limits of rotating detonation engines.
The vehicle announcement gives that propulsion work two specific applications: moving payloads between orbits with Monarch and delivering payloads to the lunar surface with Morpho. Monarch’s planned orbital demonstration is the company’s announced next flight milestone.
