First Tellurium and PyroDelta Provide Update on DARPA Lift Challenge

Vancouver, BC, Canada, July 9, 2026 – TheNewswire – Vancouver, BC – First Tellurium Corp. (CSE: FTEL, OTC: FSTTF) and its subsidiary PyroDelta Energy Corp. have provided an update regarding participation in the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Lift Challenge. As announced today, PyroDelta was not selected as an official entrant in this year's flight competition. However, PyroDelta remains confident in the importance and power of its technology. The company will still attend the DARPA event to demonstrate its drone design, meet with industry participants and continue discussions with potential collaborators. “During prototype development, PyroDelta conducted real-world testing of its original 20-horsepower turbine propulsion system and determined that actual fuel consumption was higher than the manufacturer's published specifications,” said First Tellurium President and CEO Tyrone Docherty. “As a result, the aircraft would have required substantially more fuel than originally anticipated.” Rather than proceed with a design that did not meet its performance objectives, the engineering team elected to redesign the aircraft around a far more powerful, custom-built, 40-horsepower piston engine. In addition to the added propulsion, PyroDelta’s design also included a ground-breaking rotor design that added significantly to lift capacity. While the new system better aligned with the Company's performance goals, the change represented a significant modification to the original competition submission. "I believe this was the reason for not being accepted,” said PyroDelta Head Engineer Michael Abdelmaseh. “The purpose of engineering is to validate assumptions through testing, and our testing identified a limitation that required us to rethink the propulsion sys...