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To date, it is the only operational MPD thruster to have flown in space as a propulsion system. Experimental prototypes were first flown on Soviet spacecraft. The applied-field MPD thruster in development at the Institute of Space Systems of the University of Stuttgart reached a thruster efficiency of 61.99% in 2019, corresponding to a specific ...
Spacecraft electric propulsion (or just electric propulsion) is a type of spacecraft propulsion technique that uses electrostatic or electromagnetic fields to accelerate mass to high speed and thus generating thrust to modify the velocity of a spacecraft in orbit. [1] The propulsion system is controlled by power electronics.
In 2008, a team of Chinese researchers led by Juan Yang (杨涓), professor of propulsion theory and engineering of aeronautics and astronautics at Northwestern Polytechnical University (NWPU) in Xi'an, China, said that they had developed a valid electro-magnetic theory behind a microwave resonant cavity thruster.
Electromagnetic propulsion (EMP) is the principle of accelerating an object by the utilization of a flowing electrical current and magnetic fields. The electrical current is used to either create an opposing magnetic field, or to charge a field, which can then be repelled.
Plasma propulsion engines using magnetohydrodynamics for space exploration have also been actively studied as such electromagnetic propulsion offers high thrust and high specific impulse at the same time, and the propellant would last much longer than in chemical rockets. [14]
The Hall-effect thruster is classed as a moderate specific impulse (1,600 s) space propulsion technology and has benefited from considerable theoretical and experimental research since the 1960s. [1] Hall thrusters operate on a variety of propellants, the most common being xenon and krypton.
The first prototype of this kind of propulsion was built and tested in 1965 by Steward Way, a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Way, on leave from his job at Westinghouse Electric, assigned his senior-year undergraduate students to develop a submarine with this new propulsion system. [34]
The Bussard ramjet is a theoretical method of spacecraft propulsion for interstellar travel.A fast moving spacecraft scoops up hydrogen from the interstellar medium using an enormous funnel-shaped magnetic field (ranging from kilometers to many thousands of kilometers in diameter); the hydrogen is compressed until thermonuclear fusion occurs, which provides thrust to counter the drag created ...