NASA’s Innovative Rocket Nozzle Paves Way for Deep Space Missions

NASA’s Innovative Rocket Nozzle Paves Way for Deep Space Missions

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NASA’s Innovative Rocket Nozzle Paves Way for Deep Space Missions

A hot fire test of a 3D printed nozzle is shown with an orange fire being expelled at Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.

The RAMFIRE nozzle performs a hot fire test at Marshall’s East test area stand 115. The nozzle, made of the novel aluminum alloy 6061-RAM2, experiences huge temperature gradients. As hot gasses approach 6000 degrees Fahrenheit and undergo combustion, icicles are forming on the outside of the engine nozzle.

Credits:
NASA

By Ray Osorio

NASA recently built and tested an additively-manufactured – or 3D printed – rocket engine nozzle made of aluminum, making it lighter than conventional nozzles and setting the course for deep space flights that can carry more payloads.

Under the agency’s Announcement of Collaborative Opportunity, engineers from NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, partnered with Elementum 3D, in Erie, Colorado, to create a weldable type of aluminum that is heat resistant enough for use on rocket engines. Compared to other metals, aluminum is lower density and allows for high-strength, lightweight components.

However, due to its low tolerance to extreme heat and its tendency to crack during welding, aluminum is not typically used for additive manufacturing of rocket engine parts – until now. 

Meet NASA’s latest development under the Reactive Additive Manufacturing for the Fourth Industrial Revolution, or RAMFIRE, project. Funded under NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD), RAMFIRE focuses on advancing lightweight, additively manufactured aluminum rocket nozzles. The nozzles are designed with small internal channels that keep the nozzle cool enough to prevent melting.

A nozzle is being created by a 3D printer layer by layer. The photo has a golden hue from the light and laser.
At the RPM Innovation (RPMI) facility in Rapid City, South Dakota, manufacturing for a large-scale aerospike demonstration nozzle with integral channels is underway. The laser powder directed energy deposition (LP-DED) process creates a melt pool using a laser and blows powder into the melt pool to deposit material layer by layer. NASA engineers will use the nozzle as a proof of concept to inform future component designs.
RPM Innovation

With conventional manufacturing methods, a nozzle may require as many as thousand individually joined parts. The RAMFIRE nozzle is built as a single piece, requiring far fewer bonds and significantly reduced manufacturing time. 

NASA and Elementum 3D first developed the novel aluminum variant known as A6061-RAM2 to build the nozzle and modify the powder used with laser powder directed energy deposition (LP-DED) technology. Another commercial partner, RPM Innovations (RPMI) in Rapid City, South Dakota, used the newly invented aluminum and specialized powder to build the RAMFIRE nozzles using their LP-DED process.

“Industry partnerships with specialty manufacturing vendors aid in advancing the supply base and help make additive manufacturing more accessible for NASA missions and the broader commercial and aerospace industry,” Paul Gradl, RAMFIRE principal investigator at NASA Marshall, said.

We’ve reduced the steps involved in the manufacturing process, allowing us to make large-scale engine components as a single build in a matter of days.

Paul Gradl

Paul Gradl

RAMFIRE Principal Investigator

NASA’s Moon to Mars objectives require the capability to send more cargo to deep space destinations. The novel alloy could play an instrumental role in this by enabling the manufacturing of lightweight rocket components capable of withstanding high structural loads.

Seen here at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, and developed with the same 6061-RAM2 aluminum material used under the RAMFIRE project, is a vacuum jacket manufacturing demonstrator tank. The component, made for cryogenic fluid application, is designed with a series of integral cooling channels that have a wall thickness of about 0.06 inches.
NASA

“Mass is critical for NASA’s future deep space missions,” said John Vickers, principal technologist for STMD advanced manufacturing. “Projects like this mature additive manufacturing along with advanced materials, and will help evolve new propulsion systems, in-space manufacturing, and infrastructure needed for NASA’s ambitious missions to the Moon, Mars, and beyond.”

Earlier this summer at Marshall’s East Test Area, two RAMFIRE nozzles completed multiple hot-fire tests using liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen, as well as liquid oxygen and liquid methane fuel configurations. With pressure chambers in excess of 825 pounds per square inch (psi) – more than anticipated testing pressures – the nozzles successfully accumulated 22 starts and 579 seconds, or nearly 10 minutes, of run time. This event demonstrates the nozzles can operate in the most demanding deep-space environments.

A female engineer with brown curly hair and a male engineer with short brown hair look at a nozzle on a table that has been through hot fire testing.
NASA Engineers, Tessa Fedotowsky and Ben Williams, from Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, inspect the RAMFIRE nozzle following successful hot-fire testing.
NASA

“This test series marks a significant milestone for the nozzle,” Gradl said. “After putting the nozzle through the paces of a demanding hot-fire test series, we’ve demonstrated the nozzle can survive the thermal, structural, and pressure loads for a lunar lander scale engine.”

In addition to successfully building and testing the rocket engine nozzles, the RAMFIRE project has used the RAMFIRE aluminum material and additive manufacturing process to construct other advanced large components for demonstration purposes. These include a 36-inch diameter aerospike nozzle with complex integral coolant channels and a vacuum-jacketed tank for cryogenic fluid applications.

NASA and industry partners are working to share the data and process with commercial stakeholders and academia. Various aerospace companies are evaluating the novel alloy and the LP-DED additive manufacturing process and looking for ways it can be used to make components for satellites and other applications.

Ramon J. Osorio

Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama

256-544-0034

ramon.j.osorio@nasa.gov

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Beth Ridgeway

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Watch Live as NASA Astronauts Conduct Spacewalk, Upgrade Space Station

Watch Live as NASA Astronauts Conduct Spacewalk, Upgrade Space Station

NASA astronaut Jasmin Moghbeli (center) assists astronauts Andreas Mogensen (left) from ESA (European Space Agency) and Loral O'Hara (right) from NASA as they try on their spacesuits and test the suits' components aboard the International Space Station's Quest airlock in preparation for an upcoming spacewalk.
NASA astronaut Jasmin Moghbeli (center) assists astronauts Andreas Mogensen (left) from ESA (European Space Agency) and Loral O’Hara (right) from NASA as they try on their spacesuits and test the suits’ components aboard the International Space Station’s Quest airlock in preparation for an upcoming spacewalk.
NASA

Two NASA astronauts aboard the International Space Station will conduct a spacewalk Monday, Oct. 30, to complete maintenance activities at the orbital complex.

Live coverage of the spacewalk begins at 6:30 a.m. EDT on NASA Television, the NASA app, and the agency’s website. The spacewalk is scheduled to begin about 8:05 a.m., and last about six-and-a-half hours.

NASA astronauts Jasmin Moghbeli and Loral O’Hara will exit the station’s Quest airlock to remove an electronics box called the Radio Frequency Group from a communications antenna on station. They also will replace one of 12 trundle bearing assemblies on a solar alpha rotary joint. The bearings enable the station’s solar arrays to rotate properly to track the Sun as the station orbits the Earth. When looking at the space station, the antenna is on the starboard (right side) truss, and the rotary joint is on the port, or left side.

U.S. spacewalk 89 will be the first for both Moghbeli and O’Hara. Moghbeli will serve as extravehicular activity crew member 1 and will wear a suit with red stripes. O’Hara will serve as extravehicular crew member 2 and will wear an unmarked suit.

Station managers continue planning for another spacewalk with O’Hara, as well as ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Andreas Mogensen, to collect samples for analysis to see whether microorganisms may exist on the exterior of the orbital complex. That spacewalk, which now is U.S. spacewalk 90, has been postponed to no earlier than December.

Get breaking news, images and features from the space station on the station blog, Instagram, Facebook, and X.

Learn more about International Space Station research and operations at:

https://www.nasa.gov/station

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Sandra Jones
Johnson Space Center, Houston
281-483-5111
sandra.p.jones@nasa.gov

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Meet Tracy Hudspeth: Communications Specialist at NASA Office of Small Business Programs

Meet Tracy Hudspeth: Communications Specialist at NASA Office of Small Business Programs

A photo of Tracy Hudspeth at the Washington Harbor

As another inspiring Hispanic Heritage Month concludes, we wanted to take the moment to highlight one of our own, Tracy Hudspeth. Tracy Hudspeth is the Communication Specialist at NASA Office of Small Business Programs. She plays a pivotal role in shaping the organization’s public image and ensuring effective communication internally and externally.

National Hispanic Heritage Month celebrates the contributions of Hispanic and Latino Americans to the United States. How do you feel about being part of this celebration, especially in the context of your work with NASA?

I’m honored to be recognized in this celebration as an Afro-Latina working for NASA. In this position, I have the pleasure of planning our monthly Learning Series and quarterly Outreach Events. I take pride in the fact that we create events that provide resources and help to promote the growth and development of Hispanic-owned businesses in the United States. This is personal to me because several members of my family, including my mom, utilized available programs and resources to start their businesses.

Can you share an exciting project you recently worked on?

All of my projects have been exciting but if I had to choose, I would say the NASA Small Business Opportunities and Resources Networking Conference which took place on Wednesday, October 11th!

Who inspires you?

All the women in my family.  I come from a long line of strong women. Their traits include being self-confident, productive, optimistic, caring, fearless women who stand up for what they believe in and unbothered by what others say or think.  They have always inspired me to be true to myself and a go-getter! 

Do you have a favorite memory where you most strongly felt a sense of community?

I recently attended a block party in my old neighborhood. This event is special to me because my son who was 5 at the time came up with the idea of having an “outside party” after having a conversation with an original homeowner who had been living there since the 1960’s.  With the assistance of our neighbors, my son’s dream of bringing the block party back to life came true and they have continued the tradition ever since. It was wonderful to attend this year to see the community come together to celebrate and fellowship.

Editor: Maliya Malik, NASA Office Of Small Business Programs Intern

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Metrics

Metrics

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The SLA provides information about roles, responsibilities, rates, and service level indicators for all NASA Centers. The SLA is negotiated on an annual basis in line with the fiscal year. A single SLA is shared by all NASA Centers and signed by the Associate Administrator, Chief Financial Officer, Chief Information Officer, and the Office of Inspector General. The SLA provides for the delivery of specific services from the NSSC to NASA Centers and Headquarters Operations in the areas of:

  • Financial Management
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The NSSC is fundamentally changing the way NASA does business. In order to maintain customer loyalty and satisfaction, we must not only deliver a higher level of service, but also be customer focused. 
Executive Summary of Broad-Based Survey Results for 2016
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NSSC Bill (Formerly know as Performance and Utilization Report (PUR))

*** On-Line Course Management and Training Purchases have been realigned to the OLC &Training Purchases section of the bill in accordance with the realignment of training funds. Center Special Projects have been consolidated into one Special Projects bill with the funding Center identified for each project.***

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NASA’s Webb Discovers New Feature in Jupiter’s Atmosphere

NASA’s Webb Discovers New Feature in Jupiter’s Atmosphere

Narrow jet stream near equator has winds traveling 320 miles per hour

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has discovered a new, never-before-seen feature in Jupiter’s atmosphere. The high-speed jet stream, which spans more than 3,000 miles (4,800 kilometers) wide, sits over Jupiter’s equator above the main cloud decks. The discovery of this jet is giving insights into how the layers of Jupiter’s famously turbulent atmosphere interact with each other, and how Webb is uniquely capable of tracking those features.

Image: Webb’s View of Jupiter

Jupiter dominates the black background of space. The image is a composite, and shows Jupiter in enhanced color, featuring the planet’s famous Great Red Spot, which appears white with light pink around the edges. The planet is striated with swirling horizontal stripes of green, periwinkle, light pink, and cream. Horizontally across the equator is a wide cream-colored band, whose height extends about 1/7 of the planet. This is the planet’s equatorial zone. The stripes across the planet interact and mix at their edges. Along both of the northern and southern poles, the planet glows in green. Bright red auroras glow just above the planet’s surface at both poles.
This image of Jupiter from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) shows stunning details of the majestic planet in infrared light. In this image, brightness indicates high altitude. The numerous bright white ‘spots’ and ‘streaks’ are likely very high-altitude cloud tops of condensed convective storms. Auroras, appearing in red in this image, extend to higher altitudes above both the northern and southern poles of the planet. By contrast, dark ribbons north of the equatorial region have little cloud cover.
Image: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, R. Hueso (University of the Basque Country), I. de Pater (University of California, Berkeley), T. Fouchet (Observatory of Paris), L. Fletcher (University of Leicester), M. Wong (University of California, Berkeley), J. DePasquale (STScI)

“This is something that totally surprised us,” said Ricardo Hueso of the University of the Basque Country in Bilbao, Spain, lead author on the paper describing the findings. “What we have always seen as blurred hazes in Jupiter’s atmosphere now appear as crisp features that we can track along with the planet’s fast rotation.”

The research team analyzed data from Webb’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) captured in July 2022. The Early Release Science program – jointly led by Imke de Pater from the University of California, Berkeley and Thierry Fouchet from the Observatory of Paris – was designed to take images of Jupiter 10 hours apart, or one Jupiter day, in four different filters, each uniquely able to detect changes in small features at different altitudes of Jupiter’s atmosphere.

“Even though various ground-based telescopes, spacecraft like NASA’s Juno and Cassini, and NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have observed the Jovian system’s changing weather patterns, Webb has already provided new findings on Jupiter’s rings, satellites, and its atmosphere,” de Pater noted.

While Jupiter is different from Earth in many ways – Jupiter is a gas giant, Earth is a rocky, temperate world – both planets have layered atmospheres. Infrared, visible, radio, and ultraviolet light wavelengths observed by these other missions detect the lower, deeper layers of the planet’s atmosphere – where gigantic storms and ammonia ice clouds reside.

Image: Jupiter’s Equatorial Jet Stream

The infographic shows Webb’s image of Jupiter at the left. The planet is striated with swirling horizontal stripes of neon turquoise, periwinkle, and cream. Below the planet, the NIRCam filters and their respective colors assigned are listed – F164N in blue, F212N in green, and F360M in red. On the right side of the infographic, there are 8 separate images. Two of those images are horizontal and span the entire right half of the infographic. The top horizontal image is labeled F212N 10:52 UT and the bottom is labeled F212N 20:55 UT. They are zoomed-in pullouts from a section of Jupiter’s equator—outlined in a white box on the image of the planet on the left. Both of these images are white and grey with horizontal wispy clouds. There are 6 smaller boxes in between the two horizontal images—3 rows of 2. The first column of the boxes is outlined in orange, the second column purple and the third yellow. Each of the smaller images correspond to orange, purple, and yellow boxes placed along the horizontal images.
This image of Jupiter from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) shows stunning details of the majestic planet in infrared light. In this image, brightness indicates high altitude. The numerous bright white ‘spots’ and ‘streaks’ are likely very high-altitude cloud tops of condensed convective storms. Auroras, appearing in red in this image, extend to higher altitudes above both the northern and southern poles of the planet. By contrast, dark ribbons north of the equatorial region have little cloud cover. In Webb’s images of Jupiter from July 2022, researchers recently discovered a narrow jet stream traveling 320 miles per hour (515 kilometers per hour) sitting over Jupiter’s equator above the main cloud decks.
Image: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, R. Hueso (University of the Basque Country), I. de Pater (University of California, Berkeley), T. Fouchet (Observatory of Paris), L. Fletcher (University of Leicester), M. Wong (University of California, Berkeley), J. DePasquale (STScI)

On the other hand, Webb’s look farther into the near-infrared than before is sensitive to the higher-altitude layers of the atmosphere, around 15-30 miles (25-50 kilometers) above Jupiter’s cloud tops. In near-infrared imaging, high-altitude hazes typically appear blurry, with enhanced brightness over the equatorial region. With Webb, finer details are resolved within the bright hazy band.

The newly discovered jet stream travels at about 320 miles per hour (515 kilometers per hour), twice the sustained winds of a Category 5 hurricane here on Earth. It is located around 25 miles (40 kilometers) above the clouds, in Jupiter’s lower stratosphere.

By comparing the winds observed by Webb at high altitudes, to the winds observed at deeper layers from Hubble, the team could measure how fast the winds change with altitude and generate wind shears.

Image: Jupiter’s Winds

A portion of the graphic that displays wind speeds on Jupiter at different altitudes. The portion of this graphic shows the ends of three arrows that travel across the graphic from the left to the right. The top most arrow (colored in sky blue) extends the farthest right to about 3/4 the way across the graphic, the middle arrow (colored in periwinkle) extends to a little less than halfway across the graphic, and the bottom arrow (colored in light grey) extends to about 1/4 the way across the graphic. Extending out below each arrow is a cone of the same color to indicate the +/- error margin. There is Webb's image of Jupiter in the background of the graphic.
Researchers using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) have discovered a high-speed jet stream sitting over Jupiter’s equator, above the main cloud decks. At a wavelength of 2.12 microns, which observes between altitudes of about 12-21 miles (20-35 kilometers) above Jupiter’s cloud tops, researchers spotted several wind shears, or areas where wind speeds change with height or with distance, which enabled them to track the jet. This image highlights several of the features around Jupiter’s equatorial zone that, between one rotation of the planet (10 hours), are very clearly disturbed by the motion of the jet stream.
: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Image: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, R. Hueso (University of the Basque Country), I. de Pater (University of California, Berkeley), T. Fouchet (Observatory of Paris), L. Fletcher (University of Leicester), M. Wong (University of California, Berkeley), A. James (STScI)

While Webb’s exquisite resolution and wavelength coverage allowed for the detection of small cloud features used to track the jet, the complementary observations from Hubble taken one day after the Webb observations were also crucial to determine the base state of Jupiter’s equatorial atmosphere and observe the development of convective storms in Jupiter’s equator not connected to the jet.  

“We knew the different wavelengths of Webb and Hubble would reveal the three-dimensional structure of storm clouds, but we were also able to use the timing of the data to see how rapidly storms develop,” added team member Michael Wong of the University of California, Berkeley, who led the associated Hubble observations.

The researchers are looking forward to additional observations of Jupiter with Webb to determine if the jet’s speed and altitude change over time.

Image: Zoom in on Webb’s View of Jupiter

Jupiter dominates the black background of space. The image is a composite, and shows Jupiter in enhanced color, featuring the planet’s famous Great Red Spot, which appears white with light pink around the edges. The planet is striated with swirling horizontal stripes of green, periwinkle, light pink, and cream. Horizontally across the equator is a wide cream-colored band, whose height extends about 1/7 of the planet. This is the planet’s equatorial zone. The stripes across the planet interact and mix at their edges. Along both of the northern and southern poles, the planet glows in green. Bright red auroras glow just above the planet’s surface at both poles.
A zoomed in view of Webb’s Jupiter image.
Image: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, R. Hueso (University of the Basque Country), I. de Pater (University of California, Berkeley), T. Fouchet (Observatory of Paris), L. Fletcher (University of Leicester), M. Wong (University of California, Berkeley), J. DePasquale (STScI)

“Jupiter has a complicated but repeatable pattern of winds and temperatures in its equatorial stratosphere, high above the winds in the clouds and hazes measured at these wavelengths,” explained team member Leigh Fletcher of the University of Leicester in the United Kingdom. “If the strength of this new jet is connected to this oscillating stratospheric pattern, we might expect the jet to vary considerably over the next 2 to 4 years – it’ll be really exciting to test this theory in the years to come.”

“It’s amazing to me that, after years of tracking Jupiter’s clouds and winds from numerous observatories, we still have more to learn about Jupiter, and features like this jet can remain hidden from view until these new NIRCam images were taken in 2022,” continued Fletcher.

The researchers’ results were recently published in Nature Astronomy.

The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s premier space science observatory. Webb is solving mysteries in our solar system, looking beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probing the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and the Canadian Space Agency.

Media Contacts

Laura Betzlaura.e.betz@nasa.gov
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

Hannah Braun hbraun@stsci.edu , Christine Pulliamcpulliam@stsci.edi
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Md.

Downloads

Download full resolution images for this article from the Space Telescope Science Institute.

Related Information

NASA’s Jupiter Website – https://science.nasa.gov/jupiter/

NASA’s Solar System Website – https://science.nasa.gov/solar-system/

More Webb News – https://science.nasa.gov/mission/webb/latestnews/

More Webb Images – https://science.nasa.gov/mission/webb/multimedia/images/

Webb Mission Page – https://science.nasa.gov/mission/webb/

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