With the aim to reduce cost and increase reliability, MEMS technology penetrates space market and new MEMS components are developed for Space application. Among them, micropropulsion devices is an active field of technological research. Several micropropulsion option are under development : the thrust is produced either from a electrical source (electrical thruster) or a chemical source (chemic...

A new dual-fluid concept was studied that could eventually find application for cold-gas propulsion for small space satellites or other constant flow applications. In basic form, the concept uses two different refrigerant working fluids, each having a different saturation vapor pressure. The higher vapor pressure refrigerant remains in the saturation phase and is used to pressurize the lower sa...

The potential environmental effects of the exhaust products of conventional rocket propellants have been assessed by various groups. Areas of concern have included stratospheric ozone, acid rain, toxicity, air quality and global warming. Some of the studies which have been performed on this subject have concluded that while the impacts of rocket use are extremely small, there are propellant dev...

Design and analysis of propellant grain configurations for determination of the grain geometry which is an important and critical step in the design of solid propellant rocket motors, because accurate calculation of grain geometrical properties plays a vital role in performance prediction. The performance prediction of the solid rocket motor can be achieved easily if the burn back steps of the ...

A colloid thruster functions by electrostatically generating and accelerating sub-micron droplets of propellant to high velocities. The technology is attractive because of the weight and size of the integrated package, its high efficiency, low power consumption and inert propellant. The development of the thruster prototype at Stanford University is aimed for a proof-of-concept flight-testing o...

A key requirement of a low-gravity screen-channel liquid acquisition device (LAD) is the need to retain 100% liquid in the channel in response to propellant outflow and spacecraft maneuvers. The point at which a screen-channel LAD ingests vapor is known as breakdown, and can be measured several different ways such as: visual observation of bubbles in the LAD channel outflow; a sudden change in ...

CUBESATS are relatively new spacecraft platforms that are typically deployed from a launch vehicle as a secondary payload,1 providing low-cost access to space for a wide range of end-users. These satellites are comprised of building blocks having dimensions of 10x10x10 cm 3 and a mass of 1.33 kg (a 1-U size). While providing low-cost access to space, a major operational limitation is the lack o...

The performance metrics of a 2-kW-class thruster operated using magnesium propellant was measured and compared to the performance of the same thruster operated using xenon propellant. It was found that the magnesium thruster has thrust ranging from 34 mN at 200 V to 39 mN at 300 V with 1.7 mg/s of propellant. It was found to have 27 mN of thrust at 300 V using 1.0 mg/s of propellant. The thrust...