Spaceflight company Virgin Galactic announced on Monday, Sept.28, that it has made a significant breakthrough in the development of its experimental rocket engine for the LauncherOne spacecraft. News of the progress comes two weeks after Virgin revealed plans to increase the performance of the launch vehicle.
The Virgin Group-owned company said that it had successfully conducted a 20-second test firing of its NewtonThree engine that will be used in the initial stage of Virgin's air-launched rocket and tested an important component of the spacecraft's second stage engine. Both tests were carried out at the company's facility in California.
The NewtonThree is a pump-fed engine that utilizes a combination of kerosene and liquid oxygen as propellants. It is designed to create a force of up to 73,500 pounds in order to lift the LauncherOne spacecraft during its first stage.
Virgin said that test has provided them with highly valuable data regarding the NewtonThree engine during its launch, operation and safe shutdown.
The space company also tested the gas generator for the NewtonFour, a smaller engine than the NewtonThree that will be used for the upper stage of the LauncherOne. This gas generator is capable of burning only a small amount of the propellant to power the pumps of the spacecraft's engine. It fired for over six minutes in each of the NewtonFour engine's full-duration tests.
George Whitesides, CEO of Virgin Galactic, said that while the company still has a lot of work to do regarding its LauncherOne project, the results of the NewtonThree and NewtonFour tests are very encouraging.
Earlier in September, Virgin Galactic announced that it plans to increase the LauncherOne's payload capability. When the spacecraft was unveiled in 2012, the space company said that it is capable of carrying as much as 225 kilograms (496 pounds) of payloads into orbit.
The recent upgrade of the LauncherOne allows it to carry more than 400 kilograms (881 pounds) into a generic low orbit of the Earth, and 200 kilograms (440 pounds) into the sun-synchronous orbit, which is the location of most remote sensing satellites.
The performance upgrade stems from the NewtonThree and NewtonFour engines' additional thrust that was not seen in earlier engine designs Virgin Galactic developed for the LauncherOne as well as for the NewtonOne and NewtonTwo. These initial engine models are now considered as demonstrator engines by the space company.
The demonstrator engines made use of a design with a simpler pressure feeding system, while the latest engine designs use turbopumps that were created together with Barber Nichols Inc. Barber Nichols is known for building turbopumps for commercial and government clients.
