New NASA Program Yields Work for Aerojet

Aerojet Rocketdyne has been chosen by NASA to be part of a new program to develop capabilities to benefit future space missions. The Chatsworth campus of El Segundo-based parent Aerojet Rocketdyne Holdings Inc. will work with the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. to design and manufacture a lightweight rocket engine combustion chamber using innovative processes and materials. “The goal of the project is to reduce manufacturing costs and make the chamber scalable for different missions,” NASA said in a release. Jim Reuter, associate administrator of NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate, said the agency’s facilities are helping commercial companies mature their technologies at a competitive pace. “We’ve identified technology areas NASA needs for future missions, and these public-private partnerships will accelerate their development so we can implement them faster,” Reuter said in a statement. Other Southern California companies chosen for the program are SpaceX, in Hawthorne, which will work with NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida to advance its technology to vertically land large rockets on the Moon, and Vulcan Wireless of Carlsbad, which will partner with Goddard Space Flight Center to test a CubeSat radio transponder and its compatibility with NASA’s Space Network.