Aerojet, a GenCorp (NYSE: GY) company, announced the Company's 150-lbf thrust high performance storable bipropellant engine demonstrated a specific impulse of 333.5 seconds at its Redmond, Wash. facility.

The Advanced Materials Bipropellant Rocket (AMBR) engine was designed and tested under contract to NASA's In-Space Propulsion Technology Program (ISPT), with the goal of maximizing the performance of storable bipropellant engines. The ISPT Program, located at NASA Glenn Research Center, develops propulsion technologies to enable or benefit near and mid-term NASA space science missions by significantly reducing spacecraft cost, mass, and travel times. Aerojet's AMBR engine incorporates an innovative injector and pre-combustor design with an iridium-lined rhenium combustion chamber, packaged within the envelope of existing 100-lbf thrust engines. The flight design engine uses hydrazine fuel and nitrogen tetroxide oxidizer at feed pressures and mixture ratios typical of current flight propulsion systems. The engine demonstrated acoustic and thermal stability at chamber temperatures of up to 4000 F (2200 C). The test series covered a wide range of mixture ratios, feed pressures and burn durations, including steady state burns lasting as long as 800 seconds.

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