The recent testing of some of the most intricate rocket engine parts ever designed suggests 3D-printers not only have a secure place in the high-tech world but will carry the space industry into the future.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is reporting the successful firing of "the most complex rocket engine parts ever designed by the agency and printed with additive manufacturing, or 3-D printing, on a test stand at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama," according to a news release.

Engineers with the space agency "pushed the limits of technology" in their design of a rocket engine injector, which sends propellant into a rocket engine.

Through traditional manufacturing techniques, the injector's highly intricate features would not have been possible to fabricate as a single component.

However, through 3-D printing technology, NASA rocket designers were able to built each part by layering metal powder and fusing it together with a laser, a process known as selective laser melting.

The end result was an injector with 40 individual spray elements, all printed as a single component rather than manufactured individually.

The newly-developed injector is similar in size to injectors that power small rocket engines and similar in design to injectors for large engines, like RS-25 engine selected to power NASA's Space Launch System -- the heavy-lifting rocket under development that's anticipated to take humans beyond Earth orbit, to Mars and elsewhere.

"We wanted to go a step beyond just testing an injector and demonstrate how 3-D printing could revolutionize rocket designs for increased system performance," Chris Singer, director of Marshall's Engineering Directorate, said in a statement. "The parts performed exceptionally well during the tests."

Using traditional manufacturing methods, 163 individual parts would be made and then assembled, NASA explained, but with 3-D printing, only two parts needed to be constructed -- therefore saving time and money and giving engineers the ability to build parts that improve rocket engine performance, but are prone to fail.

Two rocket injectors were tested for five seconds each, producing 20,000 pounds of thrust.

"One of our goals is to collaborate with a variety of companies and establish standards for this new manufacturing process," explained Marshall propulsion engineer Jason Turpin. "We are working with industry to learn how to take advantage of additive manufacturing in every stage of space hardware construction from design to operations in space. We are applying everything we learn about making rocket engine components to the Space Launch System and other space hardware."

Along with aiding engineers in building and testing an enhanced-design injector, the additive manufacturing technology also enabled them to test the components in question faster and smarter.

Marshall's in-house capability to design and produce small 3-D printed parts quickly, "allows us to look at test data, modify parts or the test stand based on the data, implement changes quickly and get back to testing," said Nicholas Case, a propulsion engineer leading the testing. "This speeds up the whole design, development and testing process and allows us to try innovative designs with less risk and cost to projects."