Brunswick-based bluShift Aerospace ran a hot-fire test of its biofueled engine, MAREVL, that will be used in its rocket, Starless Rogue, Friday, Sept. 6. Kristian Moravec / The Times Record

Brunswick aerospace company bluShift finally ran a full flight-duration hot-fire test of its engine that will eventually take its rocket, Starless Rogue, to space.

The engine, named MAREVL, ran for 60 seconds on Friday at bluShift’s newly expanded test stand at Brunswick Landing. The test means that the company is about a year or so out from doing low-altitude launches of its rocket.

“The team has been working extremely hard so that we can get to hot fire ASAP. That moment has arrived,” said bluShift founder and CEO Sascha Deri, who also noted that the test is crucial to future rocket launch. The engine must burn for the amount of time that it would take to fly the rocket to the Kármán line (the boundary between Earth’s atmosphere and outer space) while staying intact.

A crowd of bluShift investors, family members and aerospace fans gathered Friday evening to watch the hot-fire test of the biofueled MAREVL engine. Kristian Moravec / The Times Record

A crowd of rocket enthusiasts, company investors and family members gathered around 4 p.m. for pizza and drinks as bluShift geared up for the test.

Deri also said that it has been a year and three months since the last hot-fire test, which was only 21 seconds long. In Friday’s test, bluShift had to measure thrust levels, any instabilities of the launch and whether the engine burned as long as the company expected. In essence, engineers needed to answer one simple question: “How far can we get?”

The flame produced on Friday night’s test was stable for a few seconds and then wavered a bit after — similar to a light emitted by a welding torch. Deri said prior to the test that the ideal outcome is a steady flame once the engine reached a high thrust level. The hope was for no significant fluctuation. However, he acknowledged that the bluShift team and viewing party may see “bumps along the way.”

“I’m very happy. We’ve been working real hard, too,” said Chief Technology Officer David Hayrikyan after the test. “Everyone’s been putting in crazy hours — we knew what we were working toward. We just did it, and that’s a crazy feeling. It doesn’t always work like that, and today it did.”

BluShift CTO David Hayrikyan stood outside eating a pizza and checking his phone at the monitoring trailer parked near a Brunswick Executive Airport runway. The team was waiting for the oxidizer tank to warm up to the appropriate temperature for the hot-fire test. Kristian Moravec / The Times Record

During the process, lead propulsion test engineer Gerard Desjardins said he monitored temperatures, pressures, sound and video feeds. He said the next step is to analyze the data the team collected during the fire.

“We were just focused on making sure everything looked okay, and it did,” Desjardins said.

The test — which was delayed over two hours on Friday night to allow the new oxidizer tank that feeds the engine to warm up properly — was months of blood, sweat and tears. BluShift employees toiled away day and night to prepare for a hot-fire test. Despite having office space at Hangar 6 of the Brunswick Executive Airport, most workers have been clocking in over 10 minutes away at the test site worth $1.5 million at an isolated portion of the airport surrounded by woods. Deri and Hayrikyan said that teams stayed up past midnight on Thursday to get the engine ready for Friday’s event.

The goal, according to Deri, is to eventually be able to take research materials — often referred to as payloads — up to the Kármán line for several minutes of “zero-G time” or microgravity. The current niche market for microgravity research only offers a limited amount of time for testing materials.

Deri said that the rocket will run on a nontoxic biofuel derived from agricultural products, falling in line with bluShift’s sustainability initiatives. For instance, some of the materials used in the build, such as the steel oxidizer tank, make rocket components reusable. He joked that the rocket would likely be less contaminating then some of the boats that would have to retrieve it from the water after a launch.

“We don’t have to do things at the expense of our planet,” Deri said.

The test can be viewed at the company’s YouTube channel, @bluShiftAerospace.