The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Marshall Space Flight Center successfully tested a 3D printed rotating detonation rocket engine (RDRE). The test lasted more than 4 minutes and produced huge thrust. The test is critical for deep space missions and marks another step forward for NASA in developing efficient propulsion systems from the moon to Mars.

In the fall of 2023, engineers at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, successfully conducted a 251-second hot-fire test of a full-scale rotating detonation rocket engine combustor, achieving more than 5,800 pounds of thrust. Source: NASA

NASA has reached a new benchmark in the development of an innovative propulsion system called the Rotating Detonation Rocket Engine (RDRE). Engineers at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, successfully tested a new 3D printed RDRE for 251 seconds (more than 4 minutes) and produced more than 5,800 pounds of thrust.

This sustained burn simulates the typical requirements of a lander landing or a deep space burn that would allow a spacecraft to fly from the moon to Mars, said Thomas Teasley, a Marshall burner engineer.

In the summer of 2022, RDRE conducted the first hot-fire test at Marshall in partnership with InSpace LLC of Lafayette, Indiana, and Purdue University. That test produced more than 4,000 pounds of thrust and lasted nearly a minute. Teasley noted that the main purpose of the latest test is to better understand how to scale the combustor to different thrust levels to support various types of engine systems and maximize the variety of missions it can serve, from landers to final stage engines to supersonic thrust reverser, a deceleration technology that can lower larger payloads and even humans to the surface of Mars.

Test bed video captured at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, shows the ignition of a full-scale rotating deflagration rocket engine combustor, which achieved a record-breaking 251 seconds to ignite and produced more than 5,800 pounds of thrust.

"RDRE enables a huge leap in design efficiency," he said. "It shows we are closer to creating lightweight propulsion systems that will allow us to send greater mass and payloads farther into deep space, which is a key component of NASA's Moon to Mars vision."

Engineers at NASA's Glenn Research Center in Cleveland and researchers at Venus Aerospace in Houston, Texas, are working with NASA's Marshall Branch to determine how to scale the technology to improve performance.

RDRE is managed and funded by NASA's Space Technology Mission Directorate's Game-Changing Development Program.

Compiled source: ScitechDaily