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A Hall-effect thruster designed by University of Michigan researchers, NASA, and the U.S. Air Force has achieved a maximum thrust of 5.4 Newtons. The "X3" thruster uses three channels of plasma instead of a single channel like most Hall thrusters. It is designed to operate at 200 kW but has been tested at a range of 5 kW to 102 kW so far:
A thruster that's being developed for a future NASA mission to Mars broke several records during recent tests, suggesting that the technology is on track to take humans to the Red Planet within the next 20 years, project team members said.
The X3 thruster, which was designed by researchers at the University of Michigan in cooperation with NASA and the U.S. Air Force, is a Hall thruster — a system that propels spacecraft by accelerating a stream of electrically charged atoms, known as ions. In the recent demonstration conducted at NASA's Glenn Research Center in Ohio, the X3 broke records for the maximum power output, thrust and operating current achieved by a Hall thruster to date, according to the research team at the University of Michigan and representatives from NASA.
"We have shown that X3 can operate at over 100 kW of power," said Alec Gallimore, who is leading the project, in an interview with Space.com. "It operated at a huge range of power from 5 kW to 102 kW, with electrical current of up to 260 amperes. It generated 5.4 Newtons of thrust, which is the highest level of thrust achieved by any plasma thruster to date," added Gallimore, who is dean of engineering at the University of Michigan. The previous record was 3.3 Newtons, according to the school.
A manned Mars mission could require a thruster capable of operating at 500 kW-1 MW, if not more.
Previously: Researchers Improve the Design of Cylindrical Shaped Hall Thrusters
(Score: 2) by esperto123 on Monday October 16 2017, @10:18AM (5 children)
Isn't 102kW (or more than 100hp) for 5.4N just horribly inefficient?
i understand that the advantages of this type of thruster is that is consumes almost no mass compared to chemical rockets and can operate for very long periods, which could result in high speeds, but considering how small the force is, and the amount of mass needed to produce hundreds of kilowatts using solar panels to get such small nudges, no wonder it is not in use.
Do anyone knows what is the theoretical efficiency limit of a hall thruster? are they any close to it or there are much more room for improvement?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 16 2017, @10:43AM
But yes, this is a transit engine, not an entry/exit engine.
(Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Monday October 16 2017, @11:09AM (2 children)
Time for the crash course on ion engines [wikipedia.org]:
Simply put, they enable spacecraft to travel much faster over time than chemical rockets would allow, and you can do finer adjustments to trajectory by activating the engine over a long period of time.
https://www.space.com/28732-nasa-dawn-spacecraft-ion-propulsion.html [space.com]
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(Score: 2) by bob_super on Monday October 16 2017, @06:55PM (1 child)
That's a good thing for a robotic probe.
TFS hints about human transport, where every day spent traveling means a lot more mass to push in the first place.
If they make this light enough to be worth its 5.4N contribution, it's a good extra help. But at that level, it cannot be the primary for human missions, even if we only ship toddlers.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday October 16 2017, @07:30PM
They say "500 kW-1 MW" or more would be used for a manned mission. That's more than 5.4 Newtons of thrust.
The Dawn spacecraft [wikipedia.org] could accelerate from 0 to 96km/h in 4 days using 0.09 N of thrust.
That's +4320 km/h in 6 months (typical length of a journey to Mars).
Manned spacecraft are more massive, but if the thrust is over 500x higher (at the 1 MW level), then the acceleration may be significant over the duration of the mission.
((1 MW / 102 kW) * 5.4 N) / 0.09 N = 588x more thrust than Dawn. If we go as high as 2 MW, you can double that. For a spacecraft 100x more massive than Dawn, that would be 0 to 96 km/h in 8 hours, 9 minutes, and 36 seconds instead of 4 days. That should increase velocity by 50,823 km/h in 6 months. That is added to whatever relative velocity the spacecraft already achieved using chemical rockets to escape Earth.
r8 my math
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 16 2017, @11:15AM
Current efforts peak around 60% efficiency, no idea what the theoretical limit of the X3 is. There are a few papers here [umich.edu] that may cover this, should anyone have the time and inclination to read them.