ASTRA SPACE OPERATIONS, INC. — National Aeronautics and Space Administration SBIR Phase II: To-date, the realization of small-scale, high-performance liquid bipropellant rocket engin

ASTRA SPACE OPERATIONS, INC. — SBIR Phase II award from National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

Amount
$599,679
Agency
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
Program / Phase
SBIR · Phase II
NAICS
Place of performance
CA
Period
2011-06-01 → 2013-05-31

Description

To-date, the realization of small-scale, high-performance liquid bipropellant rocket engines has largely been limited by the inability to operate at high chamber pressures in a regeneratively-cooled environment using on-board pumps for propellant pressurization. Ventions seeks to fulfill this critical need by using a novel fabrication scheme to realize small-scale thrust chambers and turbopumps, and proposes to extend its previously-demonstrated technologies (under DARPA and NASA sponsored efforts) to develop a 3,000lbf, regeneratively-cooled, cryogenic propulsion system with a T/W ratio of approx. 100 and a vacuum Isp up to 355sec.