By Chen Ly.
The vacuum chamber has the electric propulsion system firing in it.
The person is ThrustMe.
A satellite has been powered up for the first time. Iodine performed better than the traditional propellant of choice, xenon, highlighting its potential utility for future space missions.
Spacecraft use systems to move around in space, for example. The propellant is expelled from the spaceship to propel it forwards.
xenon is the main propellant in electric propulsion systems, but it is rare and expensive to produce. xenon needs specialized equipment to be stored at high pressures.
Iodine is cheaper and more abundant than xenon. It has the potential to simplify satellite designs because it can be stored as an unpressurised solid.
Dmytro Rafalskyi and his colleagues at ThrustMe have developed an electric system that uses the radioactive substance iodine.
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The system turns a solid block of iodine into a gas. The gas is bombarded with high-speed electrons, which causes it to turn into a plasma of free electrons. The negatively charged hardware propels the spacecraft forwards by speeding up the positively charged iodine ion from the plasma towards the exhaust.
The system was tested in space on a small satellite. The satellite was put into space on 6 November 2020 at an altitude of 480 kilometres. The team successfully operated the system 11 times in a row.
The group found that the iodine system was slightly better than the xenon system in terms of energy efficiency and viability as a propellant.
If we want sustainable space exploration, where we don't create as much space junk as today, we need to put propulsion systems on all satellites. He says that this could allow a satellite to come back to Earth, instead of staying in the air for the rest of its life.
There are some issues with the substance. The team had to use ceramics and polymers to protect parts of the system because of the reaction of iodine with most metals. It takes about 10 minutes for solid Io to turn into a plasma, which may not be enough for emergency maneuvers to avoid an in-orbit collision.
The journal is titled Nature.
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