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Communications Space Technology

Plasma Thrusters For Small Satellite Systems Hit Hyper Drive (zdnet.com) 17

Greg Nichols reporting for ZDNet: A company that makes propulsion systems for small satellites, Orbion Space Technology, has announced $9.2M in Series A funding. The round was led by Material Impact, a venture firm focused on translating early stage materials technologies into products and companies. Orbion has developed a very Star Trek-sounding technology that may prove to be a crucial component of an emerging New Space industry, the first-ever Hall-effect plasma thrusters for small satellites, dubbed the Aurora system. The company plans to use the capital from this round to support mass production of its thrusters.

Hall-effect plasma thrusters are a type of ion drive in which a propellant is accelerated by an electric field. The technology has been around since the 1960s, and Hall-effect thrusters were in use on Soviet satellites between 1972 and 1990. What's new is the size of the thrusters, as well as the size of the satellites they power, which are variously dubbed smallsats, microsatellites, or nanosatellites. As components and sensing technology has gotten smaller, and with the diversity of computing and sensing components available off-the-shelf, this new breed of satellite is cheap to build and lightweight, further reducing payload costs. That's opening up the possibility of launching communications and satellite arrays to companies and organizations that have never had that option.

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Plasma Thrusters For Small Satellite Systems Hit Hyper Drive

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  • The picture looks frighteningly similar to the flame out of a jet cigar lighter.

    I want one!

  • Consumerist garbage and swarms of microsatillites to impede launches.
    • They are only traveling at 17,000 mph, nothing to worry about.
    • by lgw ( 121541 )

      The smaller the satellite, the quicker the problem solves itself. But efficient micro thrusters could allow smaller sats to get out of LEO, which could be pretty neat.

      We had that article about the small-sat solar sail the other day, but that's an awkward solution to the same problem. Hall effect thrusters are remarkably efficient, and you don't have to drag a sail through the atmosphere.

      • Electric thrusters will also have a higher thrust/area ratio. Even the old NSTAR engine generated 70 millinewtons from 2.3 kW of power. You can generate 2.3 kW of power using ~6 square meters of PV cells in orbit these days. 6 square meters of a solar sail will give you at best 0.05 millinewtons from the same area.
        • by atisss ( 1661313 )

          The only issue is, that they still need propellant, while solar sails are propellant free. Could be non-significant amounts for the power to adjust orbits, but unsuitable for longer trips.

    • I don't see this technology contributing to space pollution at all. In fact I see it as something that stands a chance at reducing the clutter that might otherwise start occurring.

      Like it or not communications networks like SpaceX's StarLink and whatever Amazon's version is called are going up. That's 12,000ish tiny sats per network. At some point in time the sats are going to fall out of a useful orbit, not necessarily "down" but gravitational perturbations might knock them off enough that laser alignme

  • "Fascinating, Captain. It seems that one of our micro sensor-satellites the Enterprise automatically launches was left behind and discovered after we departed when we went back in time to the 1960s with that slingshot maneuver around the sun. It seems *we* are actually the source for the "discovery" of the original impulse thruster technology we use today in the 23rd** century."

    "Are you sure? That sounds very improbable. Next you'll tell me that we're also responsible for the "discovery" of transparent alum

  • by AndyKron ( 937105 ) on Saturday August 31, 2019 @04:53AM (#59143384)
    Warp .00000000000001. Pulse thrusters ENGAGE!
  • There doesn't seem to be any info on the thrust achieved by these "micro"-Hall thrusters, but given the higher surface/volume ratio of small satellites, I have to wonder if advanced colloid thrusters, despite their maybe somewhat lower thrust density, wouldn't actually be competitive in this case.
  • Not a new tech (Score:4, Informative)

    by Kazymyr ( 190114 ) on Saturday August 31, 2019 @08:28AM (#59143584) Journal

    Hall effect thrusters have been around for decades, and even in small sizes. They just haven't been used as such in space applications.
    I have one such device. It was sold as a ion gun for producing directed streams of ionized gas i.e. plasma. I use it for plasma experiments in a vacuum chamber. It is produced commercially and it's not even that expensive (about $250). It measures 3cmx5cm and weighs around 100g. It produces a plasma beam of 2mA, and can reach 3mA if I overdrive it. I have thought for fun to measure the thrust it produces in vacuum with different work gases but didn't get around to configuring my system for that experiment yet. The construction is exactly the same as would be used for a thruster, just not marketed as such.

    • You are correct—they've been around for many decades. What Orbion is creating isn't new, but the manufacturing and production process is. They want to make plasma propulsion easily available for space applications with cheaper, faster production. In space applications, up until now these thrusters are mostly made like a faberge egg—unique, one by one. Orbion is focusing on the manufacturing aspect to produce them in a mass quantity and within something like 6 days versus 6 months. Also I would

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