New 3D printed rocket engine built in Huntsville fires successfully

Engineers at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville conducted a successful, 251-second hot fire test of a full-scale Rotating Detonation Rocket Engine combustor recently, achieving more than 5,800 pounds of thrust.

This kind of burn emulates typical requirements for a lander touchdown or a deep-space burn that could set a spacecraft on course from the Moon to Mars.

NASA’s 3D printed rocket engine

RDRE’s first hot fire test was performed at 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 primary goal of the latest test at Marshall is to better understand how to scale the combustor 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 to supersonic retropropulsion, a deceleration technique that could land larger payloads – or even humans – on the surface of Mars.

“The RDRE enables a huge leap in design efficiency. 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.”

Thomas Teasley, leader of the RDRE test effort at Marshall Flight Center

Engineers at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland and researchers at Venus Aerospace of Houston are working with Marshall to identify how to scale the technology for higher performance.

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