Astrobotic, a developer of lunar landers and suborbital rockets, has successfully tested an advanced rocket engine that could power those vehicles.
The Pittsburgh-based company announced April 23 it has completed a series of tests of Chakram, a rotating-detonation rocket engine, or RDRE, at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center.
In those tests, two engine prototypes fired for a combined 470 seconds, including a single 300-second burn.
