SuperDraco is a hypergolic propellant rocket engine designed and built by SpaceX. It is part of the SpaceX Draco family of rocket engines. A redundant array of eight SuperDraco engines provides fault-tolerant propulsion for use as a launch escape system for the SpaceX Dragon 2, a passenger-carrying space capsule.

SuperDraco rocket engines utilize a storable (non-cryogenic) hypergolic propellant which allows the engines to be fired many months after fueling and launch. They combine the functions of both a reaction control system and a main propulsive engine. Hypergolic fuels do not require an external source of ignition, providing increased reliability for the spacecraft.

The engines are used on crew transport flights to low Earth orbit, and were also projected to be used for entry, descent and landing control of the now-canceled Red Dragon to Mars.

SuperDracos are used on the SpaceX Dragon 2 crew-transporting space capsule and were used on the DragonFly, a prototype low-altitude reusable rocket that was used for flight testing various aspects of the propulsive-landing technology. While the engine is capable of 73,000 newtons (16,400 lbf) of thrust, during use for DragonFly testing, the engines were throttled to 68,170 newtons (15,325 lbf) to maintain vehicle stability.

SpaceX originally intended to use the SuperDraco engines to land Crew Dragon on land; parachutes and an ocean splashdown were envisioned for use only in the case of an aborted launch. Precision water landing under parachutes was proposed to NASA as "the baseline return and recovery approach for the first few flights" of Crew Dragon. The plan to use propulsive landing was later cancelled, leaving ocean splashdown under parachutes as the only option. In 2024, the use of the SuperDraco thrusters for propulsive landing was enabled again, but only as a back-up for parachute emergencies.

On February 1, 2012 SpaceX announced that it had completed the development of a new, more powerful version of a storable-propellant rocket engine, this one called SuperDraco. This high-thrust hypergolic engine—about 200 times more powerful than the Draco RCS thruster hypergolic engine—offers deep throttling ability, and just like the Draco thruster, was designed to provide multiple restart capability and use the same shared hypergolic propellants as Draco. Its primary purpose was to be for SpaceX's launch abort system (LAS) on the Dragon spacecraft. According to a NASA press release, the engine has a transient from ignition to full thrust of 100 ms. During launch abort, eight SuperDracos were expected to fire for 5 seconds at full thrust. The development of the engine was partially funded by NASA's CCDev 2 program.

Name: Draco comes from the Greek drakōn for dragon. Draco (constellation) is a constellation (the Dragon) in the polar region of the Northern Hemisphere near Cepheus and Ursa Major.

SuperDraco engines use a storable propellant mixture of monomethylhydrazine fuel and dinitrogen tetroxide oxidizer. They are capable of being restarted many times, and have the capability to deeply reduce their thrust providing precise control during propulsive landing of the Dragon capsule.