Canadian rocketeers competing in the X-Prize contest to send passengers on suborbital space hops have test fired their rocket engine, a major milestone in the team's plans to launch sometime next year.

The engine test was a crucial step for the Ontario, Canada-based Canadian Arrow team, one of 25 efforts to send loft a three-person vehicle up 62 miles (100 kilometers) up, return it safely and reuse the spacecraft within two weeks. The X Prize for the first team to do so includes a trophy and $10 million.

"Our team has spent five years researching, designing and building toward the test we performed tonight," said Canadian Arrow leader Geoff Sheerin of the Nov. 21 test. "We had a perfect ignition and a good clean burn. There were a lot of smiles here, that's for sure."

During the late-night test, Canadian Arrow's rocket engine produced 57,000 pounds of thrust using a fuel mixture of liquid oxygen and ethyl alcohol. Project engineers believe their engine, which is modeled after the German V-2 rocket and consumes about 250 pounds (113 kilograms) of propellant per second, is the largest liquid propellant engine in Canada.

Canadian Arrow engineers will continue testing the engine to prepare it for its first flight expected to take place in upcoming months.

In other X Prize-related news, the contest's newest competitor High Altitude Research Corp. (HARC), of Huntsville, Alabama, unveiled its Liberator space capsule during a Nov. 22 presentation and engine test. HARC's flight plan calls for an ocean rocket launch to a maximum altitude of 70 miles (112 kilometers) before reentering the Earth's atmosphere, deploying parachutes and splashing down.

X Prize officials anticipate that their contest will be won within seven to 10 months.

-- Tariq Malik