Draco (rocket Engine) - SuperDraco

On February 1st, 2012 SpaceX announced that it has completed the development of a new, more powerful version of a storable-propellant rocket engine, this one called SuperDraco. This high-thrust hypergolic engine—about 200 times larger than the Draco RCS thruster hypergolic engine—offers deep throttling ability and just like the Draco thruster, has multiple restart capability. Its primary purpose is for SpaceX's LAS (launch abort system) on the Dragon spacecraft. According to the NASA press release, the engine has a transient from ignition to full thrust of 100 ms. During launch abort, eight SuperDracos are expected to fire for 5 seconds at full thrust. The development of the engine is partially funded by NASA's CCDev 2 program. Estimated thrust of 67,000 newtons (15,000 lbf) makes this the second most powerful engine developed by SpaceX, approximately 200 times more powerful than the Draco thruster engines. By comparison, it is more than twice as powerful as the Kestrel engine that was used in SpaceX's Falcon 1 launch vehicle second stage, and about 1/9 the thrust of a Merlin 1D engine.

In addition to the use of the SuperDraco thrusters for powered-landings on Earth, NASA's Ames Research Center is studying the feasibility of a Dragon-derived Mars lander for scientific investigation. Preliminary analysis indicates that the final deceleration will be within the retro-propulsion SuperDraco thruster capabilities.