Pittsburgh-based space robotics and lunar logistics company Astrobotic has completed a hot fire campaign for its Chakram rotating detonation rocket engine, with additive manufacturing playing a central role in enabling the milestone. Two prototypes completed eight successful tests at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, accumulating more than 470 seconds of total run time, including a single 300-second continuous burn believed to be the longest ever recorded for an RDRE.

PermiAM: The Additive Manufacturing Technology Behind Chakram

At the center of the Chakram programme is PermiAM, a patented metal additive manufacturing technique co-developed by Astrobotic and Elementum3D that enables tunable porosity within printed metal components.…