Water Plasma Thruster

These are great low cost devices for low performance cubesats but their performance is limited and even less effective than chemical rockets and they will not scale well for use in main propulsion even on a 100 kg smallsat.

Water plasma thruster. Perhaps momentus will play a key role in the development and maintenance of the lunar orbital. In 2020 momentus plans a. They plan to demonstrate vigor their first water plasma thruster by february 2019. Up to 6km sec propulsion.

They heat water into vapor and squirt it out of a nozzle to produce thrust. Water plasma powered vigor specific impulse. Momentus plans to demonstrate vigor its first water plasma thruster by sending it into orbit in february 2019 on a 16 unit cubesat launched from a russian soyuz rocket. This makes rockets using water plasma propulsion easy to launch.

Up to 700 seconds double the performance of chemical rockets solar power. Ardoride for service start in 2021. In 2020 momentus will demonstrate their ardoride propulsion system meant to power spacecraft weighing between 500 and 1 000 kilograms. In orbit servicing space debris removal platform for small.

Momentus space and astro digital are testing a water plasma thruster on their joint el camino real mission launched in july. In 2013 alone some 200 spacecraft were operating in the solar system that used ep thrusters for station keeping orbital adjustments or as their primary means of propulsion. Aquajet is a type of electric propulsion ep system called a plasma thruster which in itself is nothing new ep thrusters have been in use for decades and with great success. Main thruster for deep space spacecrafts in space boosters for micro launchers.

What makes aquajet unique is that it has the ability to use water as a propellant and that thanks to its design the thruster itself won. It will fly aboard a 16 unit cubesat launched from a russian soyuz rocket. Unlike the fuel for ion engines and chemical propellants liquid oxygen hydrogen hydrazine xenon which are either cryogenic or toxic and highly pressurized water can be stored safely in low pressure tanks and poses no risk of combustion or explosion. A plasma propulsion engine is a type of electric propulsion that generates thrust from a quasi neutral plasma this is in contrast with ion thruster engines which generate thrust through extracting an ion current from the plasma source which is then accelerated to high velocities using grids anodes.