Mini-Helicon Thruster Development at MIT

[venator_3000]

<p><span class="story"><font color="#000000">Satellites orbiting the Earth must occasionally be nudged to stay on the correct path. This is certainly true in the case of the satellite collison this month. It would have been great if the two satellites could have avoided each other (had they had some sort of collision warning in advance). I recently read that MIT scientists are developing a new rocket that could make this and other spacecraft maneuvers much less costly, a consideration of growing importance as more private companies start working in space.&nbsp;Better maneuverability and an ability to de-orbit a system might reduce the chance of clutter on-orbit.<br /><br />MIT has a new system which is just a test bed. it is called the Mini-Helicon Plasma Thruster. I believe it is much smaller than other rockets of its kind and runs on gases that are much less expensive than conventional propellants. As a result, it could cut fuel usage by 10 times that of conventional systems used for the same applications. Current propulsion systems &mdash; used for maintaining a satellite's orbit, pushing a spacecraft from one orbit to another, and otherwise maneuvering in space &mdash; rely on chemical reactions that occur within the fuel, releasing energy that ultimately propels the object.&nbsp; I've read that chemical rockets are expensive largely due to the amount of fuel they use so an alternative might be of great use.&nbsp;<br /><br />There have been many recent examples of such systems. In these, an external source of electrical energy is used to accelerate the propellant that provides the thrust for moving a craft through space. Such non-chemical rockets have been successfully used by NASA and the European Space Agency in missions including NASA's<em> Deep Space 1</em>, which involved the flyby of a comet and asteroid. <br /><br />But the field is still relatively new, and these advanced rockets are a focus of the MIT Space Propulsion Laboratory (SPL).The Mini-Helicon is the first rocket to run on nitrogen, the most abundant gas in our atmosphere. </font></span></p><p><span class="story"><font color="#000000">The Mini-Helicon has three general parts: a quartz tube wrapped by a coiled antenna, with magnets surrounding both. </font></span></p><p><span class="story"><font color="#000000">A gas is pumped into the quartz tube, where radio frequency power transmitted to the gas from the antenna energizes the gas into plasma, or electrically charged gas. The magnets not only help produce the plasma, but also confine, guide and accelerate it through the system. The plasma beam escaping out the end of this rocket is what provides thrust.&nbsp; Velocity from the helicon is some 10 times higher than the velocity from the average chemical rocket, so much less propellant is needed.</font></span></p><p><span class="story">This is an exciting development and one that might someday be on-board satellites.</span></p><p><span class="story">Here is an image of the Mini-Helicon Thruster in its test chamber at MIT. <img src="http://sitelife.space.com/ver1.0/content/scripts/tinymce/plugins/emotions/images/smiley-cool.gif" border="0" alt="Cool" title="Cool" /></span></p><p><span class="story"><br /><img src="http://sitelife.space.com/ver1.0/Content/images/store/7/13/57eb417a-55d9-45a3-9d4a-34a047d516ca.Medium.jpg" alt="" /><br /></span></p><p><span class="story">V3K</span></p> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[Stewie_Griffin]

i might be wrong but that sounds a lot like VASIMIR http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasimir

 

[Swampcat]

Hey V3k, did you write this article? I see no link or acknowledgement of the source. Bad form.