Astrobotic announced the successful hot fire test of its Chakram rotating detonation rocket engine (RDRE) at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) in Huntsville, Alabama. Two Chakram engine prototypes completed eight successful hot-fire tests, accumulating more than 470 seconds of total run time without any discernible damage to the engine hardware. The campaign included a 300-second continuous burn, which is believed to have set the record for longest duration hot firing of an RDRE engine to date.
During testing, each engine produced more than 4,000 pounds of thrust, making Chakram one of the most powerful RDREs ever demonstrated. With the exception of two brief igniter tests, all hot fires in the campaign reached thermal steady state, demonstrating stable and sustained engine operation.
“Chakram more than exceeded our expectations. With any cutting-edge technology like an RDRE, moving from design into testing, you’re always worried about unknown factors that could be critical to performance. But the engine performed even better than expected,” said Bryant Avalos, Astrobotic’s Principal Investigator for the Chakram program. “The 300-second burn was the cherry on top. Demonstrations like this show how RDRE technology could support a wide range of Astrobotic missions, from propulsion on future lunar landers to in-space orbital transfer vehicles, and other capabilities that will help expand operations throughout cislunar space.”
This successful test campaign is a major milestone in Astrobotic’s development of RDREs to improve the performance and payload capacity of its spacecraft. Astrobotic plans to incorporate this state-of-the-art propulsion technology into future vehicles, including Griffin-class lunar landers, Xodiac and Xogdor-class reusable rockets and an orbital transfer vehicle currently in development.
RDREs are an emerging propulsion technology with game-changing potential to improve engine performance. Unlike conventional rocket engines, RDREs combust propellants using supersonic detonation waves that rotate around the engine’s ring-shaped outer body. This detonation process allows the engine to extract more useful work from the same amount of fuel, offering the potential to increase specific impulse (engine efficiency) by as much as 15%, increase thrust-to-weight ratio and improve engine packaging by reducing its size and weight.
The Chakram design, development, and testing effort was supported by two NASA SBIR contracts and a Space Act Agreement with NASA Marshall. The SBIR contracts focused largely on novel injector design and applications of Astrobotic’s patented PermiAM technology to RDREs. PermiAM is a novel technique for tunable porosity metal additive manufacturing co-developed with Elementum3D. It can be used for improving thermal management, combustion stability, and propulsion efficiency. It has shown promising applications for RDREs, other advanced propulsion systems, and hypersonic thermal management.
“Everyone on this team has poured their hearts into this project,” said Travis Vazansky, Astrobotic’s RDRE Program Manager. “This was pulled off by a small group working on a modest budget. Seeing the engine perform flawlessly on its first attempt is a testament to their acumen, ingenuity, and scrappiness. I could not be prouder of what this team has achieved.”
The company plans to continue maturing Chakram through a series of upcoming design iterations and test campaigns. These efforts will focus on key aspects of the engine design that will be critical to meeting future spacecraft and lander mission requirements, including regenerative cooling, throttling, and mass reduction.
“This test campaign was a tremendous success, and we met every objective we set out to achieve,” said Monica Traupmann, Co-Investigator on the Chakram program. “The data from these tests gives us a powerful foundation for the next phase of RDRE development and will help guide future engine designs. I’m excited about where we can take this technology next.”
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