Everest Engine:
Astrobase Space Technologies recently unveiled Everest, an 800 kN Full-Flow Staged Combustion rocket engine, as India’s private space sector targets reusable, high-cadence orbital launches.
- Everest Engine is an 800 kN Full-Flow Staged Combustion (FFSC) rocket engine.
- It was developed by Astrobase Space Technologies, a Bengaluru-based Indian space-tech startup.
- It is India’s first privately developed high-thrust FFSC engine.
- It is designed for reusable medium-lift launch vehicles, supporting precision control, faster turnaround, and improved launch economics.
- It is powered by liquid oxygen and liquid methane, a combination known as methalox, and is designed to produce about 800 kilonewtons of thrust in the vacuum of space.
- In a conventional rocket engine, some of the hot gases produced during combustion are used to power the turbopumps that push fuel and oxidiser into the main combustion chamber.
- A full-flow engine takes this a step further.
- Both the fuel and oxygen are first partially burned in separate pre-burners, producing hot gases that drive their respective pumps before both flows enter the main combustion chamber.
- This allows the engine to operate efficiently at very high pressure while reducing stress on some components.
- The design is widely considered among the most advanced approaches to rocket propulsion.
- SpaceX is currently the only company to have flown an FFSC engine in an orbital rocket.
