The Exploration Company has successfully completed a hot-fire test campaign of the third prototype of its Huracan rocket engine. The company is developing the engine to power its Nyx Moon spacecraft, which will be utilized for missions to lunar orbit and the surface of the Moon.
On 20 December, The Exploration Company announced that it successfully concluded the first test campaign of the third iteration of the Thrust Chamber Assembly (TCA) of its cryogenic Huracan rocket engine. The testing was conducted on the P8 test bench at the DLR testing facilities in Lampoldshausen, Germany.
Over the course of several hot-fire tests, the TCA was fired for a total of over 600 seconds, with the longest single test lasting for more than two minutes. The testing included the use of a nozzle extension skirt, which the company explained was “a critical step toward developing Huracan for vacuum operation.”
During the test campaign, the company validated the TCA’s thermo-mechanical cycling behaviour, which is how it responds to repeated thermal and mechanical stresses caused by rapid heating and cooling during hot-fire tests. To do this, the company completed 19 hot-fire tests, each lasting 10 seconds, over the course of 19 minutes.
While the company did not share specific results of the testing, it did state that the campaign “brought significant advancements to Huracan’s development.”
In addition to its Huracan engine, The Exploration Company is developing two other rocket engines. The Mistral engine is designed to power the Nyx Earth spacecraft in low Earth orbit. The high-thrust Typhoon engine, the most powerful of the three, is currently without a specific application, at least not one that has been publicly announced. It is, however, being positioned as a candidate for a next-generation European launch vehicle.
