Airborne Engineering Ltd

Race2Space 2024 summarised in one picture! 31 hot-fires with 18 teams taking part and over 220kNs total impulse produced. It's great to see the momentum building in UK student propulsion. Really proud of what we have achieved in the last two years. Thanks to everyone that helped make this happen. Airborne Engineering Ltd Buckinghamshire Council Civil Aviation Authority Protolaunch The University of Sheffield UK Space Agency Satellite Applications Catapult Charles Simpson Charlie Muir Faculty of Engineering, University of Sheffield

It's a pleasure to share that GU Rocketry's first liquid bi-prop engine, Helios, was successfully hot-fired at Airborne Engineering Ltd this week, producing 1,300 N of thrust over 10 seconds. As propulsion lead, the development of helios has been an extremely rewarding process and would not be possible without the great team at GU Rocketry, as well as our advisors Jack Tufft and Krzysztof Bzdyk. A huge thanks is due to Alistair John and the Race 2 Space team for organising this competition, as well as Airborne Engineering Ltd for aiding the team through the testing process, we look forward to returning next year!

A huge congratulations to our Project Kepler team, who completed successful cold flow testing of the Kepler engine earlier this week as part of #race2space with Airborne Engineering Ltd (videos can be found in the comments below!). The team complete 4 separate cold flow tests on the fuel side of the injector, with peak mass flow rates of just under 2.2 kg/s - nominal for the fuel side of this engine. The highlight of the testing came when the chamber and nozzle were removed and slow motion footage of the injector elements could be captured, showing uniform mixing across the injector face (minus one injector element which seemed slightly blocked - investigation underway). The propellant was launched up to 13.5m down range of the test stand, which from a back of the envelope calculation requires a peak pressure drop of around 11 bar, with the average pressure drop measured during the period of peak mass flow being around 5.5 bar. Even with only a cold flow test, the engine produced an average thrust of over 50 N, achieving a thrust to weight ratio greater than 1 for the chamber without the need for combustion! This is testament to how much focus the team have put into making the engine lightweight as they aim for the thrust to weight ratio record for a rocket engine! We are also pleased to report that there were no leaks from the injector head, suggesting that the seals between different injector manifolds performed nominally! Following these successful tests, the team are eagerly preparing for an upcoming cold flow of the LOx side of the engine, as well as working on the Turbomachinery Stack, which should be tested independently of the main Thrust Chamber Assembly early next academic year! Lots of exciting things to come for this project as they work towards a full engine hot fire next year! A huge thanks to our sponsors including Additive Industries, DoraHacks and Onshape, a PTC Technology as well as everyone at Imperial College London who has helped support the project and get us to this point! #space #rocket #rocketengine

See our Wee-Maxwell engine roaring to life! With a 25 s burn time, our engine is the first student-developed bi-propellant engine in Scotland, and holds the record for the longest burn time in the competition 🔥 Our team has put in countless hours to design, analyse, and build this engine, and we could not be more proud. See the full hot fire on our Youtube channel along with the reaction of the team at Race 2 Space. Race 2 Space Flowcopter LTD University of Edinburgh School of Engineering School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Edinburgh School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh

Southampton University Liquid Rocket Engine Team (SULRE) kicked off Race 2 Space 2024 with a bang!💥 The team put in great effort to compete in R2S with a 1.5kN flight-optimised engine ready to fire at Airborne Engineering Ltd. Unfortunately, we experienced a significant oxidizer manifold detonation during this testing, leading to severe engine damage and some memorable wallpaper images! Despite the testing not going to plan, the hard work put into the development of our engine and the lessons we have learnt testing have provided our team a great opportunity to further our understanding of rocket engineering. We are excited to keep on building rocket engines, to keep on testing rocket engines, and to keep on learning. We hope to be back up and testing as soon as possible! We'd like to thank everyone at R2S including Alistair John and The University of Sheffield for hosting the competition, Airborne Engineering Ltd for the engineering support and test stand usage, and all of our sponsors including Northrop Grumman UK, Nammo UK, Msquared Control Systems, Rocket Propulsion Analysis, Accu, EASY COMPOSITES LTD, with an additional thanks to Nammo for kindly giving us a tour of their facilities on the day.

Greetings from UCL Rocket! We are thrilled to announce the successful hot-fire testing of our first liquid bipropellant rocket engine, Meliora! Featuring an innovative "reversed-pintle" injector, a phenolic combustion chamber and nozzle, and a graphite throat insert, Meliora marks a significant milestone for our team. To ensure the integrity of our design, we successfully conducted cold flow water tests at MechSpace for the injector and a hydrostatic pressure test at Airborne Engineering Ltd for our pyrotechnic ignitor. On 8 July 2024, at Airborne Engineering Ltd (AEL), we carried out five hot-fire tests out of seven as part of the UK Race 2 Space National Propulsion Competition. Our engine ignited 5 times out of 7, with our ablative cooling and combustion chamber performing flawlessly each and every time, achieving 730N of thrust, though short of our 2kN target due to injector atomisation issues. The insights and lessons gained from Meliora and AEL's expertise will allow us to refine our design for future iterations. Next year, we look forward to advancing our propulsion capabilities by implementing regenerative cooling in a new engine! Massive thanks to all staff at Airborne Engineering Ltd, especially our competition mentor Charles Simpson for their invaluable guidance throughout this project, and to our sponsors, Janzen and Autodesk for their support and contributions! We'd like to extend our gratitude to LURA - Leeds University Rocketry Association, Project Sunride, and Imperial College London Rocketry for welcoming us to the world of student researched and developed (SRAD) propulsion! #Race2Space #Autodesk #Janzen #UCLRacing #UCLRocket

Congrats to Project Sunride for the 8th hot fire of their Sunfire III rocket engine today! 5 hot fires in one day reaching 4.7kN. After lots of planning and organisation it's great that Race 2 Space is finally here. Looking forward to seeing lots more hot fires next week! Great to see Airborne Engineering Ltd, Charles Simpson and Dr. Adam M. Baker today, thanks for your support.

Today, just before 4pm, Kingfisher roared to life! Not only did we have time for two firings, all components survived both tests with temperatures reaching over 3000 kelvin. This is a huge achievement for this team of young engineers! We want to thank all of our partners. Satellite Applications Catapult who were vital in advising om how to design for additive manufacturing as well as their help with component production. Total Carbide Ltd and Versarien® plc who machined both the combustion chamber and the injector section in record time. AMRC 's FerretWorks division for the 3D printing of our engine in Inconel 718. We want to say a big thank you to Airborne Engineering Ltd and their amazing team, who despite the stubbornness of Kingfisher, managed to light the engine and sustain combustion. We also want to express our gratitude to the admin, academics, technicians and all employees at Kingston University for assisting with making this project a reality. Without their assist with funding, manufacturing, travel and so much more this could not have been possible. Lastly but not least we want to thank Race 2 Space and the The University of Sheffield for organising and giving us the opportunity to test our engine. This competition has allowed us to take the theory we have been taught at Kingston University, and put it into practice. This provides our STEM students with vital experience thats directly related to industry, helping bridge the gap between academia and full time employment after graduation.