NASA fires up innovative 3D-printed deep space engine

The POT has successfully ignited a novel 3D-printed RDRE (Rotary Detonation Rocket Engine) for 251 seconds, or more than 4 minutes, producing more than 5,800 pounds of thrust.

That type of sustained combustion emulates the typical requirements for landing a lander or a deep-space burn that could put a spacecraft on a course from the Moon to Mars, Del’s combustion devices engineer said in a statement. Marshall Space Flight Center Thomas Teasley, who leads the RDRE test effort at the center.

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The first RDRE hot fire test was conducted in Marshall in the summer of 2022 in partnership with In Space LLC and Purdue University. That test produced more than 4,000 pounds of thrust for nearly a minute.

The main goal of the latest test, Teasley said, is to better understand how to scale the combustion chamber to different thrust classes, supporting engine systems of all types and maximizing the variety of missions it could serve, from landers to upper stage engines and supersonic jet propulsion, a deceleration technique that could land larger payloads, or even humans, on the surface of Mars.

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

Source: Elcomercio

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