NASA Marshall Fires Up Motor to Prepare for Moon Landings

This video shows a hybrid rocket motor test firing at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Engineers at NASA Marshall recently completed a test fire campaign of the 14-inch hybrid rocket motor, which ignites using both solid fuel and a stream of gaseous oxygen to create a powerful stream of exhaust. Data from the test campaign will help teams prepare for future flight conditions when commercial human landing systems, provided by SpaceX and Blue Origin, touch down on the Moon for crewed Artemis missions. The hybrid motor was test fired 30 times to ensure it will reliably ignite in preparation for testing later this year at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. This video shows the 28th test, conducted in February, during which the 3D-printed motor fired for six seconds. The hybrid motor will be used for additional testing at NASA Langley this summer. There, engineers will fire the motor, developed at Utah State University in Logan, into a field of simulated lunar regolith in the center’s 60-ft spherical near-vacuum chamber to better characterize the crater created by the rocket exhaust and how regolith particles travel. For more information, contact NASA Marshall’s Office of Communications at 256-544-0034.