SPACE/COSMOS
Spacecraft could be fuelled by space junk collected in orbit
Sarah Knapton
Sun 3 November 2024
Magdrive, a British tech company, believes that its innovation could help clean up Earth’s congested orbit, as well as creating a cutting-edge engine - @SpaceWatchGL/X.com
Spacecraft could soon be powered by space junk collected in orbit with a new engine that runs on scrap metal.
British tech startup Magdrive is developing a groundbreaking propulsion system which turns aluminium or copper into plasma to create thrust.
With an estimated 10,000 tonnes of debris floating in space, the company believes that the innovation could help clean up Earth’s congested orbit, as well as creating a cutting-edge engine.
It could even lead to satellites being able to cannibalise the casings that protect them during launch and recycle them as fuel after they have left the atmosphere.
Mark Stokes, chief executive of Magdrive, said: “There were no dinosaurs in space, so there is no chemical fuel, which means everyone has to bring their own propellant from Earth.
“It’s like building a new train every time you leave the station. So if you want to start building huge structures in space, or habitats for human beings, you need to find something different than existing propulsion. So we took a whole new approach.”
The innovation could enable satellites to cannibalise the casings that protect them during launch and recycle them as fuel
The new system works by feeding a small chunk of metal into a plasma injector where it is ionised using stored power from solar panels and turned into super hot, dense plasma. The plasma can then be shot out in gas form as a stream of bullets to produce thrust.
Currently companies working in space are limited by how much fuel they can carry from Earth, meaning they can only use their powerful thrusters sparingly.
Although solar-powered systems exist for long-term missions - generating thrust by shooting out particles of ionising gas - these produce very little force and are not good at quick, precise manoeuvring.
Magdrive believes that its plasma drive will have both power and longevity, and be able to be refuelled in space by companies collecting space junk or mining asteroids. It could allow satellites and other spacecraft to last three times as long.
Mr Stokes added: “Being able to alter the amount of power we put into the metal means we can tune it completely on the fly, and anyone can use a single propulsion system to do all these manoeuvres in space.
“We can use any solid metal. The initial thing is having to process the space metal, and commercial companies are looking at how exactly they do that, and we are talking to them early so we can get it in the form we want.”
Some 400,000 satellites have been approved globally for low Earth orbit, with Elon Musk’s SpaceX alone poised to launch another 44,000 for its Starlink internet constellation.
Experts have predicted that once all the planned internet constellations are operational there will be around 16,000 decaying satellites at any one time that will need to come out of orbit.
Not only are the dead satellites clogging up valuable orbit space but they risk setting off a major disaster. If one hits another, it could trigger a phenomenon known as the Kessler Effect, where debris from the collision creates a multiplying chain reaction of crashes.
Dead satellites in Earth orbit risk setting off a major disaster in space
Mr Stokes added: “Space is getting very congested and by the end of the decade satellites may need to make weekly manoeuvres to avoid hitting each other.
“That will mean chemical fuel systems will get used up very quickly and electrical systems don’t get you out of the way consistently.”
Speaking of the possibility of satellites using their own outer casings as fuel, he added: “80 per cent of the mass of a satellite is there to survive the launch and once it’s in place it doesn’t need all of that.
“That is perfect feed for the Magdrive so we’re also looking into developing self-eating ouroboric satellites.”
Size of a dishwasher
Magdrive, which was founded in 2019 and is based at the Harwell innovation and science campus, in Oxfordshire, has already raised more than £5 million in investment and grants, including funding from the UK Space Agency.
The company is set to begin in-space tests of its first small propulsion systems - named Rogue and Warlock - next year, before scaling up to the SuperMagDrive in 2027, which will be the size of a dishwasher.
As well as domestic satellites, spacecraft and constellations, the team also hope the technology will be useful for military purposes. Currently ground bases stations can track military satellites, but the Magdrive would allow satellites to make small trajectory adjustments to confuse the trackers.
The company is currently in talks with UK Space Command and US Space Force about the technology.
Sarah Knapton
Sun 3 November 2024
Magdrive, a British tech company, believes that its innovation could help clean up Earth’s congested orbit, as well as creating a cutting-edge engine - @SpaceWatchGL/X.com
Spacecraft could soon be powered by space junk collected in orbit with a new engine that runs on scrap metal.
British tech startup Magdrive is developing a groundbreaking propulsion system which turns aluminium or copper into plasma to create thrust.
With an estimated 10,000 tonnes of debris floating in space, the company believes that the innovation could help clean up Earth’s congested orbit, as well as creating a cutting-edge engine.
It could even lead to satellites being able to cannibalise the casings that protect them during launch and recycle them as fuel after they have left the atmosphere.
Mark Stokes, chief executive of Magdrive, said: “There were no dinosaurs in space, so there is no chemical fuel, which means everyone has to bring their own propellant from Earth.
“It’s like building a new train every time you leave the station. So if you want to start building huge structures in space, or habitats for human beings, you need to find something different than existing propulsion. So we took a whole new approach.”
The innovation could enable satellites to cannibalise the casings that protect them during launch and recycle them as fuel
The new system works by feeding a small chunk of metal into a plasma injector where it is ionised using stored power from solar panels and turned into super hot, dense plasma. The plasma can then be shot out in gas form as a stream of bullets to produce thrust.
Currently companies working in space are limited by how much fuel they can carry from Earth, meaning they can only use their powerful thrusters sparingly.
Although solar-powered systems exist for long-term missions - generating thrust by shooting out particles of ionising gas - these produce very little force and are not good at quick, precise manoeuvring.
Magdrive believes that its plasma drive will have both power and longevity, and be able to be refuelled in space by companies collecting space junk or mining asteroids. It could allow satellites and other spacecraft to last three times as long.
Mr Stokes added: “Being able to alter the amount of power we put into the metal means we can tune it completely on the fly, and anyone can use a single propulsion system to do all these manoeuvres in space.
“We can use any solid metal. The initial thing is having to process the space metal, and commercial companies are looking at how exactly they do that, and we are talking to them early so we can get it in the form we want.”
Some 400,000 satellites have been approved globally for low Earth orbit, with Elon Musk’s SpaceX alone poised to launch another 44,000 for its Starlink internet constellation.
Experts have predicted that once all the planned internet constellations are operational there will be around 16,000 decaying satellites at any one time that will need to come out of orbit.
Not only are the dead satellites clogging up valuable orbit space but they risk setting off a major disaster. If one hits another, it could trigger a phenomenon known as the Kessler Effect, where debris from the collision creates a multiplying chain reaction of crashes.
Dead satellites in Earth orbit risk setting off a major disaster in space
Mr Stokes added: “Space is getting very congested and by the end of the decade satellites may need to make weekly manoeuvres to avoid hitting each other.
“That will mean chemical fuel systems will get used up very quickly and electrical systems don’t get you out of the way consistently.”
Speaking of the possibility of satellites using their own outer casings as fuel, he added: “80 per cent of the mass of a satellite is there to survive the launch and once it’s in place it doesn’t need all of that.
“That is perfect feed for the Magdrive so we’re also looking into developing self-eating ouroboric satellites.”
Size of a dishwasher
Magdrive, which was founded in 2019 and is based at the Harwell innovation and science campus, in Oxfordshire, has already raised more than £5 million in investment and grants, including funding from the UK Space Agency.
The company is set to begin in-space tests of its first small propulsion systems - named Rogue and Warlock - next year, before scaling up to the SuperMagDrive in 2027, which will be the size of a dishwasher.
As well as domestic satellites, spacecraft and constellations, the team also hope the technology will be useful for military purposes. Currently ground bases stations can track military satellites, but the Magdrive would allow satellites to make small trajectory adjustments to confuse the trackers.
The company is currently in talks with UK Space Command and US Space Force about the technology.
TechCrunch · Image Credits:SpaceX
Aria Alamalhodaei
Fri, November 1, 2024
SpaceX will attempt to transfer propellant from one orbiting Starship to another as early as next March, a technical milestone that will pave the way for an uncrewed landing demonstration of a Starship on the moon, a NASA official said this week.
Much has been made of Starship’s potential to transform the commercial space industry, but NASA is also hanging its hopes that the vehicle will return humans to the moon under the Artemis program. The space agency awarded the company a $4.05 billion contract for two human-rated Starship vehicles, with the upper stage (also called Starship) landing astronauts on the surface of the moon for the first time since the Apollo era. The crewed landing is currently scheduled for September 2026.
Kent Chojnacki, deputy manager of NASA's Human Landing System (HLS) program, provided more detail on exactly how the agency is working with the space company as it looks toward that critical mission in an interview with Spaceflight Now. It will come as no surprise that NASA is paying close attention to Starship’s test campaign, which has notched five launches so far.
SpaceX made history during the most recent test on October 13 when it caught the Super Heavy rocket booster mid-air using “chopsticks” attached to the launch tower for the first time.
“We learn a lot each time [a launch] happens,” Chojnacki said.
Chojnacki’s work history includes numerous roles in the Space Launch System (SLS) program, which oversees the development of a massive rocket of the same name that is being built by a handful of traditional aerospace primes. The first SLS rocket launched the Artemis I mission in December 2023, and future rockets will launch the subsequent missions under the Artemis program. No part of the rocket is reusable, however, so NASA is spending upwards of $2 billion on each launch vehicle.
The first contracts for the SLS program were awarded over a decade ago under what’s known as a “cost-plus” model, which means that NASA pays a base amount plus expenses. (This type of contract has been stringently criticized for incentivizing long development timelines and high expenses.) In contrast, HLS contracts are “fixed-price” — so SpaceX receives a one-time $2.99 billion payment provided it meets certain milestones.
Chojnacki said NASA has taken very different approaches to the HLS versus SLS program, even beyond the contracting model.
“SLS was a very traditional NASA program. NASA laid out a very strict set of requirements and dictated propellant inventory, dictated all the things to the various elements. They flowed down. They were cost-plus programs where the aerospace companies would respond, and we would work in a very traditional manner,” he said. “Moving to HLS, we're doing a lot of moving parts at one time. On SpaceX's contract right now, for their initial landing, there are 27 system requirements. Twenty-seven, and we kept it as loose as possible.”
Under SpaceX’s contract, they must meet mandatory design reviews, but SpaceX can also propose additional milestones for payment. One requirement that SpaceX requested is the ship-to-ship propellant transfer demonstration. Those tests are set to begin around March 2025, with testing concluding in the summer, Chojnacki said.
“That would be the first time that's demonstrated on this scale, so that is a big building block. And once you've done that, you've really cracked open the opportunity to move massive amounts of payload and cargo outside of the Earth’s sphere. If you can have a Starship with propellant aggregation, that's going to be the next step to doing an uncrewed demonstration.”
In addition to the testing, the next major review of Starship will be the Critical Design Review (CDR) in Summer 2025, which is when NASA certifies that the company met all 27 of those system requirements. Chojnacki said NASA astronauts also meet with SpaceX once a month to provide input on Starship’s interior. The company is building mockups of the crew cabin, including the sleeping quarters and laboratory, at Boca Chica. NASA anticipates getting a design update this month before looking at it during the CDR next year.
That isn’t the only place where NASA has offered its input: It also offered input on some aspects of the rocket design, like the vehicle’s cryogenic components, as well as conducting some testing on the thermal tiles that help keep the cryogenic fuels cold.
If all goes to plan, SpaceX will land astronauts on the moon in September 2026.
“That is definitively the date we're working towards. We don't have any known road blocks. We do have some first-time things that have to be demonstrated, and we have a plan in place to go demonstrate those.
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