US propulsion system manufacturer Aerojet Rocketdyne has optimized a key component of its Reaction Control System (RCS) quad thruster using additive manufacturing and nTopology’s engineering software.
Aerojet Rocketdyne’s new space engine part is now 67 percent lighter while also reducing the overall production cost of the thruster by 66 percent to enable faster and more sustainable lunar exploration.
“If we leverage the advantages that we made over the last decade in engineering software and manufacturing hardware, we can build critical subsystems at fractions of the traditional cost while improving on the performance of heritage designs,” said James Horton, Mission Architect at Aerojet Rocketdyne.