A new electric propulsion device concept takes advantage of residual helium gas that is trapped in the chemical propellant feed system and currently unused at end of life. The helium ion thruster provides additional propellant resources to extend satellite lifetimes and transfer geostationary orbit space assets to ultrasafe disposal orbits. The predicted capability, if fully allotted to the dis...

High-precision stepped-heating experiments were performed to better characterize helium diffusion from apatite using Durango fluorapatite as a model system. At temperatures below 265øC, helium diffusion from this apatite is a simple, thermally activated process that is independent of the cumulative fraction of helium released and also of the heating schedule used. Across a factor of -4 in grain...

Numerous death cases due to suffocation in a toxic or oxygen deficient gas atmosphere have been described in the literature, but unfortunately especially cases involving inert gases like helium are often presented without detailed toxicological findings. Observations on two suicides are reported, one by helium and the other by argon inhalation. During autopsies gas samples from the lungs were c...

Helium Brayton cycles have been studied as power cycles for both fission and fusion reactors obtaining high thermal efficiency. This paper studies several technological schemes of helium Brayton cycles applied for the HiPER reactor proposal. Since HiPER integrates technologies available at short term, its working conditions results in a very low maximum temperature of the energy sources, someth...

A new method for assessing the site-specific emission from electronically excited helium droplets is presented. The fluorescence features of helium droplets show sharp rotationally resolved lines indicating desorption of excimers and emission far outside the droplets as well as blue-shifted and strongly broadened features due to emission of excimers confined in cavities within the droplets. A t...

After almost two decades of high resolution molecular spectroscopy in superfluid helium droplets, the understanding of microsolvation is still the subject of intense experimental and theoretical research. According to the published spectroscopic work including microwave, infrared, and electronic spectroscopy, the latter appears to be particularly promising to study microsolvation because of the...