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 work focuses on optimizing the pressurization system’s operating performance for a fuel tank of turbo-pumped liquid propellant rocket engine. This system is most complex and expensive in medium-size launch vehicle, after A new patented methodology reducing final mass stage proposed, studied, validated. application proposed method efficient at end engine operation sequence during throttling ...

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...

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...

Figure 1 shows the ballistic results for propellants 1, A, and B. The burning rates show no signiŽ cant alteration among the three propellants. The differential scanning calorimetry plots for these three propellants shown in Fig. 2 tell a different story, however. Compared with the baseline, both the carbon and the fullerene soot appear to eliminate the secondaryexothermicpeak at approximately ...