'Huge Leap': NASA successfully tests 3D-printed rocket engine

NASAmay look like a space agency that just keeps its lenses pointed at the sky to click pictures of distant galaxies. But the agency keeps on testing and developing new engines and space vehicles. And itsuccessfully tested a 3D-printed engineon Wednesday (Dec 20). The innovation system of propulsion is called the Rotating Detonation Rocket Engine (RDRE).

'In fall 2023' as NASA put it, the RDRE was tested at the agency's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. The engine successfully completed a 251-second 'hot fire test,' said NASA. The engine generated more than 5800 pounds of thrust.

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Such a sustained rocket burn is similar to one required for touchdown of a lander or even for a deep-space burn which would send a rocket say, from the Moon to Mars, according to Thomas Teasley, Marshall combustion devices engineer as quoted by NASA. Teasley is head of RDRE test effort at the center.

A 'huge leap'

“The RDRE enables a huge leap in design efficiency,” he said. “It demonstrates we are closer to making lightweight propulsion systems that will allow us to send more mass and payload further into deep space, a critical component to NASA’s Moon to Mars vision.”

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The first hot fire test of the RDRE was carried out at the center in summer of 2022. For this, NASA teamed up with In Space LLC and Purdue University. In this test produced more than 4000 pounds of thrust for almost a minute.

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Teasly said that theh primary aim of the latest test was to gain better understanding about how to scale the combustor for different thrust classes, 'supporting engine systems of all types and maximizing the variety of missions it could serve.' These missions could include use of machinery from landers to upper stage engines to supersonic retropropulsion.

(With inputs from agencies)