The microwave discharged ion engine, developed for Hayabusa and upgraded for Hayabusa2, worked perfectly, and low- and continuous-thrust trajectory control combined with an Earth gravity assist was successfully applied to the mission. The optical guidance and navigation for approaching, descending, and...
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk says that the company’s Raptor engine – static-fired for the first time at full scale barely four days ago – has been successfully fired at roughly 90% max thrust, briefly producing more than twice the force of one of Falcon 9’s Merlin 1D engines. Relying on S...
A spacecraft and its launch vehicle are projected upward by the unbalanced pressure inside the rocket engine. There is high pressure on the closed front end of the rocket’s thrust chamber but much lower pressure on the open back end, where the exhaust gases flow out the chamber’s nozzle....
Thrust is great, but what’s maybe just as important when designing a rocket is the thrust to weight ratio… or how heavy the engine is compared to how much thrust it produces. A higher thrust to weight engine ultimately means less dead weight the rocket needs to lug around. Let’s star...
The rocket was equipped with 33 Raptor engines, but SpaceX founder Elon Musk tweeted that engineers disabled one engine just before ignition and "1 stopped itself, so 31 engines fired overall." "But still enough engines to reach orbit!" he added. ...
Closer to home, these supercharged ion engines could figure prominently in the human exploration of space. With an adequate supply of electrical power, a small cluster of larger, high power versions of the new engine design would provide enough thrust to propel a crewed spacecraft to Mars and...
This uses a waterskiing arrangement, with the engine and everything acting like a waterbound motorboat, dragging the cargo behind like a water skier. The rocket exhaust is angled such that it doesn't incinerate the cargo (but angled just barely enough to minimize thrust cosine loss). If the...
The first stage engines shut down about two-and-a-half minutes after launch. The stage then fell away and the single engine powering the Falcon 9’s second stage took over, its nozzle glowing bright red against the limb of the Earth, generating 210,000 pounds of thrust to continue the cl...
Engine Thrust 104,000 Newtons Fuel LOX / LH2 Specific Impulse 460 sec Expansion Ratio 225 Subsystems and Materials Structure Aluminum 2219-T87, Aluminum 7075-T6 Thermal Superinsulation Micrometeoroid Hexcel Filler, Aluminum 2219-T87 Shield Engines RL10A-3-8 (uprated RL10) Pressurization GHe for ...
Along with hot staging, SpaceX added a powerful water deluge system to the launch pad to reduce the acoustic shock of engine ignition and the effects of their combined thrust. During the April launch, the base of the pad was heavily damaged, with steel and concrete debris blasted into th...