Rocket Lab Electron Rutherford Engine

Rocket LabAerospacesince 2017

Rocket Lab Electron Rutherford Engine

Entire Rutherford engine: thrust chamber, turbopumps, main propellant valves, injectors

Aerospace85% confidence

Rocket Lab – Rocket Lab Electron Rutherford Engine

Challenge

Building affordable launch vehicles for small satellites required engines manufacturable in hours, not months, with high reliability and minimal tooling cost.

Solution

Every key part of the Rutherford is 3D-printed using EBM in titanium. A complete engine can be produced in ~24 hours. The battery-powered turbopumps are also EBM-printed — making it the world's first orbital rocket engine to use electric-pump-fed propulsion enabled entirely by AM.

Outcomes

01~24 hours per engine production time
02World's first fully 3D-printed orbital rocket engine

Technologies

Electron Beam Melting

Source

Rocket Lab produced 20+ Electron missions by 2025; record-breaking year in 2024 with >20 launches planned for 2025

Cite this page

APA

AM Roadmap. (2017). Rocket Lab Electron Rutherford Engine. AM Roadmap (v0.4.2-fixes-deployed). Retrieved 2026-05-17, from https://amroadmap.com/success-stories/rocketlab-rutherford-2017

BibTeX

@misc{amroadmap_rocket_lab_electron_rutherford_engine_2017,
  title  = {Rocket Lab Electron Rutherford Engine},
  author = {{AM Roadmap}},
  year   = {2017},
  url    = {https://amroadmap.com/success-stories/rocketlab-rutherford-2017},
  note   = {AM Roadmap dataset v0.4.2-fixes-deployed, accessed 2026-05-17}
}

Canonical URL: https://amroadmap.com/success-stories/rocketlab-rutherford-2017