Details
Nova is the successor of LPL’s Balerion engine, building off the design and testing experience to create the project’s first fully reusable, high thrust class engine. Nova’s vision extends beyond successful hot fires and aims to gather experimental data to validate the project’s in-house injector and thermal models. With Nova’s test data, LPL can predict engine combustion conditions and chamber wall heat transfer with incredible accuracy. This enables the project to push the boundaries of collegiate liquid rocket propulsion, with future goals such as higher thrust, longer nominal thrust duration, and throttling capabilities. Nova is pioneering the project’s first coaxial swirl injector, characterized first with a short duration ablative chamber hot fire before being integrated into the full regeneratively cooled engine assembly.
