It was conceived through work with former astronaut Franklin Chang-Diaz ScD '77 on a much larger, more powerful system developed by Chang-Diaz. The Mini-Helicon is the first rocket to run on nitrogen, the most abundant gas in our atmosphere. This area tends to attract students with a strong physics background, because it sits at the intersection of physics and engineering, with ample room for invention," said Manuel Martinez-Sanchez, director of the SPL and a professor in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics. Others we in the SPL work on include Hall thrusters and Electrospray thrusters. "The Mini-Helicon is one exciting example of the sorts of thrusters one can devise using external electrical energy instead of the locked-in chemical energy. Such non-chemical rockets have been successfully used by NASA and the European Space Agency in missions including NASA's Deep Space 1, which involved the flyby of a comet and asteroid.īut the field is still relatively new, and these advanced rockets are one focus of the MIT Space Propulsion Laboratory (SPL). In these, an external source of electrical energy is used to accelerate the propellant that provides the thrust for moving a craft through space. For example, chemical rockets are expensive largely due to the amount of fuel they use.Īs a result, engineers have been developing alternative, non-chemical rockets. The propulsion systems currently used for maintaining a satellite's orbit, pushing a spacecraft from one orbit to another, and otherwise maneuvering in space rely on chemical reactions that occur within the fuel, releasing energy that ultimately propels the object.Īlthough such systems have brought humans to the moon and are regularly used in a variety of other applications, they have limitations. As a result, it could slash fuel consumption by 10 times that of conventional systems used for the same applications, said Oleg Batishchev, a principal research scientist in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics and leader of the work. The new system, called the Mini-Helicon Plasma Thruster, is much smaller than other rockets of its kind and runs on gases that are much less expensive than conventional propellants. 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. Satellites orbiting the Earth must occasionally be nudged to stay on the correct path.
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