Engineers at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, successfully tested a novel, 3D-printed Rotating Detonation Rocket Engine (RDRE) (earlier post) for 251 seconds producing more than 5,800 pounds of thrust.

The RDRE differs from a traditional rocket engine by generating thrust using a supersonic combustion phenomenon known as a detonation. This design produces more power while using less fuel than today’s propulsion systems.

Engineers at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, conduct a successful, 251-second hot fire test of a full-scale Rotating Detonation Rocket Engine combustor in fall 2023, achieving more than 5,800 pounds of thrust. NASA

That kind of sustained 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, said Marshall combustion devices engineer Thomas Teasley, who leads the RDRE test effort at the center.

RDRE’s first hot fire test was performed at Marshall in the summer of 2022 in partnership with In Space LLC and Purdue University, both of Lafayette, Indiana. That test produced more than 4,000 pounds of thrust for nearly a minute.

The primary goal of the latest test, Teasley noted, 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.

Engineers at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland and researchers at Venus Aerospace of Houston, Texas, are working with NASA Marshall to identify how to scale the technology for higher performance. (Airbus invested in Venus earlier this year.)

RDRE is managed and funded by the Game Changing Development Program within NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate.