ESA trials Australian plasma thruster for spaceships

LazerLordz SG

Thursday, December 29, 2005. 8:38am (AEDT)
Dr Clarke says the plasma thruster could be in use in 10 years.

ESA trials Australian plasma thruster

Scientists at the Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra say a new power source they have developed for inter-planetary space travel will be trialed by the European Space Agency (ESA).

It has taken Dr Christine Charles more than two years to develop a prototype of the plasma thruster.

She says the model is simpler, safer and cheaper than rival technologies.

Dr Charles says if the European trials are successful, the Australian technology could be flying people into space within the next few years.

"Everything deals with money and politics, but really if you push it, I think in five to 10 years' time, it's quite feasible," she said.

"Because normally it takes about a few years on Earth to do the tests in the space simulation chamber, so we're looking at a decade.

"But probably in reality it'll be between 10 and 30 years' time."

The Federal Government is being urged to sign a memorandum of understanding with the ESA to ensure more Australians can access similar opportunities.

ANU Professor Rod Boswell says if the Government committed $25 million a year to the organisation, Australian industries would get the chance to be involved in development projects.

"There's a three-times multiplier roughly, so it'd be worth about $60 to $70 million to Australian industry," he said.

"Then science can piggyback on the back of that, so yes, it'd be a wonderful and terrific investment for the future."

http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200512/s1539084.htm

LazerLordz SG

This was before it was finalised..

Researchers Create a New Plasma Thruster
Jan 29, 2004 - The dream of manned missions to Mars and beyond could become a reality thanks to plasma technology developed at ANU.

Research results to be published in the journal Applied Physics Letters this week show that the ANU Helicon Double Layer Thruster (HDLT) can be powered by hydrogen an otherwise unusable waste product in manned spacecraft.

The HDLT uses solar electricity from the sun to create a magnetic field through which hydrogen is passed to make a beam of plasma, which powers a ship through space.

While the plasma thruster has a fraction of the power of the rockets that launch the space shuttle, it uses far less fuel and gets more thrust as a ratio of the fuel it burns, making it ideal for interplanetary missions.

"The Americans say they want to send men to Mars this is the technology to take them there," said the HDLT's inventor Dr Christine Charles.

"This thruster gives Australia a fantastic opportunity to be part of the international space race."

The ANU team led by Professor Rod Boswell has been in close collaboration with NASA, helping US scientists fix glitches with their own plasma thruster, the Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket (VASIMR) invented by veteran shuttle astronaut Franklin Chang-Diaz, who visited ANU last year.

While the technology of plasma thrusters is not new, its popularity has only taken off in recent years, with it being used to help satellites maintain their positions in orbit. However, the NASA VASIMR concept and more recently the ANU HDLT are very recent inventions which may open the door to deep space exploration.

The ANU thruster has the edge on rival technologies as it is simpler and has been proven to work with hydrogen. Importantly, it also does not emit positively charged ions that could potentially cause a disaster by interfering with a spacecraft's communications systems.

"The HDLT is a beautiful piece of physics because it is so simple. It doesn't need any moving parts," Dr Charles added.

LazerLordz SG

Now a future Mars craft could be launched with conventional SRBs or LOX boosters and ignite its plasma thrusters out of LEO.