MIT’s new two-in-one space engine could turn tiny satellites into surprisingly capable deep-space explorers. Researchers at MIT are testing a new propulsion technology that could give small satellites a major boost in capability. The system combines two very different forms of spacecraft propulsion in a single package, allowing satellites to perform both rapid maneuvers and [...]
Researchers in Germany have developed a new gas-sensing technology that could make it much easier and less expensive to detect tiny amounts of gases in the environment, industrial facilities, and energy networks. The breakthrough builds on a scientific phenomenon known as the photoacoustic effect, which was first discovered more than 150 years ago. When certain […]
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An intruder has breached the French government’s encrypted messaging service, Tchap, showing once again that human error is a weak spot in any security system.
Tchap was developed in France as an example of national sovereignty and was designed to be a more secure option than WhatsApp for communication between government employees.
In this case, it wasn’t the technology that was at fault, but a user: The intruder gained access to the system by taking over their account, according to DINUM, the French government’s interministerial digital directorate.
DINUM said it has blocked the affected user’s access and is investigating how much information has been revealed. While the system’s encryption was not broken, the intruder would have been able to view unencrypted public chat rooms accessible to the account taken over, potentially affecting 73,467 of the system’s 825,000 users, DINUM said.
That matches at least part of a post on X (formerly Twitter) reporting the intruder’s claim to have accessed the account of a Tchap user in the education sector through social engineering, exposing 73,467 user accounts, 643,459 messages, 876 chat rooms with message history, and 59,386 media files totalling 13.51 GB, including references to documents marked “Diffusion Restreinte” (restricted distribution).
DINUM said that it had reminded all Tchap users that public chat rooms are accessible to any user and are not encrypted, so all participants should refrain from any sensitive or confidential information.
This article first appeared on CSO.
Imagine wearing a jacket that can produce drinking water from the air around you. That idea is moving closer to reality thanks to engineers at the University of Texas at Austin, who have developed a special fabric that captures moisture from the atmosphere and turns it into clean water. The new technology could be useful […]
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For many coffee lovers, making espresso seems to require two essential ingredients: very hot water and high pressure. But researchers at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Australia have challenged that assumption by creating espresso-strength coffee using room-temperature water and ultrasonic sound waves. The new technique could reduce the energy needed to make […]
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A team of researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and other institutions has developed a new way to improve the performance of powerful electronic devices by using an ultrathin layer of diamond. The breakthrough could help future technologies such as 6G wireless networks, satellite communications, radar systems, and even data centers operate faster […]
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Researchers from the private nuclear fusion energy company Commonwealth Fusion Systems have published a series of papers that they claim confirm that their flagship ARC reactor will produce more usable energy than it consumes if built as designed.
Although the company projects it will deliver the first commercial fusion plants by the early 2030s, other researchers say there are remaining challenges to overcome, and won’t declare the ARC reactor successful until an operational version is constructed to validate the research team’s theoretical predictions.
Scientists have long dreamed of capturing the nuclear fusion reaction that fuels our Sun and using it to generate clean, renewable power. Private fusion firms like CFS have received nearly $10 billion in funding over the last decade alone.
The first laboratory “net-energy” controlled fusion reaction, which fusion scientists call “ignition,” didn’t occur until 2022, when physicists at the US National Ignition Facility in Livermore, California, successfully produced more energy than was used to generate the reaction. Although brief, that moment has fueled speculation that practical fusion energy generation may be right around the corner.
Now, the Commonwealth team, which includes 58 researchers from the company and partner institutes, has published scientific papers outlining the physics of their ARC reactor, including new models that they say account for the “expected behavior” of the superhot plasma at the heart of the design.
Brandon Sorbom, the company’s chief science officer, said that the published works “confirm that when we build the ARC fusion power plant, it will work”.
After nearly a decade of research, CFS, founded in 2018, is currently preparing its prototype for a 2027 demonstration it calls ‘SPARC.’ The company said they expect that trial run, which will demonstrate their technology’s ability to generate more energy than it needs to heat the plasma, will help them fine-tune ARC’s final design.
According to the Commonwealth-led team, ARC will generate more energy than is required to operate the entire facility, including plasma heating, resulting in a true net-positive power-generation facility. This includes producing approximately 400 megawatts of net electricity, which the team noted is enough to power 280,000 average US homes. For comparison, recent census data indicates that Boston, Massachusetts, near the company’s headquarters in Cambridge, has around 271,000 U.S. homes.
Like SPARC, the ARC reactor uses high-temperature superconducting magnets to compress the plasma, which remains suspended by the magnetic fields, preventing it from damaging the chamber walls and terminating any potential fusion reaction. Under this extreme pressure, the nuclei of heavy hydrogen trapped inside the chamber fuse to form helium, the same reaction that takes place inside the Sun.
This fusion reaction results in the release of energy, primarily high-speed neutrons. At its hottest, the donut-shaped ring of plasma reaches seven times the temperature of the Sun.
Tony Roulstone, a nuclear engineer at the University of Cambridge, UK, conceded that the CFS team and its collaborating authors are “some of the best in the fusion business” and noted the company’s ARC reactor concept is the result of “good work over many years.” However, Roulstone also warned of the pressure on researchers in privately funded companies to “claim things before the evidence is fully in place.”
David Hammer, a nuclear engineer at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, said it is a good sign that the team is publishing at a high volume, but also warned that published papers will not guarantee that the built device will work as intended.
Their modeling “has to be proven correct by a fusion reactor that works as designed”, he adds. If the firm can get SPARC operating successfully next year, “it will be an important step forward”, he says.
Hamner also noted that several of the design’s subsystems require further development before it can be declared complete. This includes addressing how plasma will behave in the real world when it becomes unstable versus its modeled behavior, proving out the process for extracting usable energy from the generated heat, and demonstrating that the reactor is robust enough to operate for long periods.
The scientists also noted the challenges in sourcing tritium, the isotopic fuel the reactor requires to operate. Although CFS has outlined its tritium generation process, Hamner noted that the series of published papers neither details the process nor demonstrates its viability.
“There are candidate blanket materials and blanket designs, but there are many engineering person-years needed” to bring a functional ARC-style plant to fruition, he explained.
“We certainly have to build more on top of that foundation laid out in these papers,” a company spokesperson said, adding that they will “be able to produce tritium for operations and for future power plants.”
The following articles were published by the CFS-led team: “Overview of the physics basis for the ARC fusion power plant“; “ARC disruption physics and strategy“; “Performance and Transport in the ARC Tokamak“; “Power and particle exhaust for the ARC fusion power plant“; “ARC Physics Basis-Magnetohydrodynamics.”
Editor’s Note: This article was updated to correct a previous version that described neutrinos, rather than fast-neutrons, in the context of the reporting, and to clarify that the first achievement of a “net-energy” controlled fusion reaction (ignition) occurred in 2022.
Christopher Plain is a Science Fiction and Fantasy novelist and Head Science Writer at The Debrief. Follow and connect with him on X, learn about his books at plainfiction.com, or email him directly at christopher@thedebrief.org.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) engineers are testing a new category of advanced-propulsion “electrospray” thrusters that combine the benefits of modern chemical and electrical thrusters used to drive satellites and other spacecraft into one hybrid system.
The team behind the novel propulsion technology said that electrospray thrusters could allow mission planners to design smaller, more nimble satellites and spacecraft capable of performing faster, more powerful maneuvers or slower, more precise adjustments, depending on mission requirements.
Launching rockets into space still requires chemical thrusters, but once spacecraft and satellites reach orbit, engineers continue to develop novel propulsion methods that are more efficient than chemical propulsion technologies. Given the strict weight requirements of spacecraft launches, finding alternatives to chemical propellants has opened up a wider range of mission profiles.
Among the most common alternatives to chemical thrusters are designs that combine electrical energy with small amounts of propellant to produce small but sustainable thrust. Although electric thruster designs require less fuel, saving significantly on launch weight, they also lack both the power and the rapid, quick burst performance of chemical thrusters.
According to study author Amelia Bruno, a former postdoc in MIT’s Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AeroAstro), combining chemical and electrical propulsion into a single system is “the best of both worlds.”
“This opens the door for small satellites to do even more science, more observations, and more interesting missions, all on a smaller and cheaper platform,” Bruno explained to MIT News.
Study co-author Paulo Lozano, the Miguel Alemán Velasco Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics at MIT, agreed, noting that combining both technologies could enable a CubeSat mission to Mars “where they could make the journey slowly, using electrospray thrusters.”
“You could then use your chemical thrusters to quickly move to look at interesting features,” the professor added. “You could have a lot more flexibility to do a lot more things.”
According to a statement detailing the new electrospray thruster’s design, the ones developed by the MIT team are about the size of a thumbnail. Each thruster is also placed directly above a small fuel reservoir. For the MT electrospray thrusters, the fuel is an ionic liquid propellant, a liquid composed of salts that remain dissolved in a solution.
“Ionic liquids are very stable and can even remain a liquid in space, which not a lot of materials can do,” Bruno explained. “And it’s basically a sea of ions, which is why we base our technology around it, so we can pull those ions out into an electrospray.”
When a spacecraft’s battery delivers an electric charge to the fuel reservoir, the ions within the fuel also become charged. The thruster’s design channels the charged particles from the reservoir and through the thruster tips, expelling them into space.
Although the team has tested several types of ionic propellant in its electrospray propulsion thrusters, Bruno and Lozano have collaborated with the U.S. Air Force to synthesize an all-new ionic liquid propellant, which they are calling the Advanced SpaceCraft Energetic Non-Toxic propellant, or ASCENT.
Originally designed as a “green” alternative to extremely hazardous hydrazine rocket fuel that has been the staple in the rocket industry for decades, Bruno notes that ASCENT “happens to be an ionic liquid mixture.”
“And we said, hey, that’s the stuff we typically use,” the researcher added. “Theoretically, this should work. Let’s go figure out how.”
To test their electrospray design, each tested thruster was attached to a small reservoir about the size of a single Lego brick, and then the reservoir was filled with ASCENT. Next, electrospray thrusters were mounted on opposite sides of a traditional CubeSat.
To simulate the microgravity environment of Near-Earth Orbit, the team placed the thruster-equipped CubeSat on a MagLev stand. The team noted that the MagLev in Lozano’s lab is installed inside a large vacuum chamber. This design allows the researchers to fine-tune the environment to best mimic the conditions in space.
During a series of tests, the team applied varying voltage levels to the electrospray thrusters. As expected, the reaction produced a spray from the thruster nozzles, which spun the CubeSat around on the MagLev stand like a freely spinning top.
During each thruster firing, the team measured the amount of thrust produced. This data, combined with the voltage and fuel data, allowed the team to calculate ASCENT’s fuel efficiency during continuous operation. Some tests lasted up to 100 hours.
When the MIT group evaluated the results, they first determined that the choice of ASCENT was correct, as it successfully fueled each electrospray thruster. Even more significantly, the tests revealed that the readily available chemical propellant was equally efficient as conventional ionic liquids.
“Compared to our normal electrospray propellants, ASCENT can provide similar performance in terms of thrust,” Bruno explained. “Now that we know our thrusters work with ASCENT, we can start thinking of all the ways we can make them even better.”
When discussing the benefits of their successful electrospray thruster tests, Lozano noted that a spacecraft with electric and chemical thrusters can share a single fuel tank. Due to its compact design, this hybrid electrospray thruster could be mounted on a small satellite.
Fortunately, the team won’t have to wait long to see their thruster in action. According to the research team, whose work was partially supported by NASA, their design will be incorporated into NASA’s upcoming Green Propulsion Dual Mode mission scheduled to launch in November. The Green Propulsion Dual-Mode mission will carry a briefcase-sized CubeSat with a primary chemical thruster and specially designed electrospray thrusters, making it the first attempt to combine electrical and chemical propulsion in a small spacecraft.
“This will be the first time that a satellite will have a shared propellant tank,” Lozano explained.
Although a large portion of proposed electric propulsion missions that might employ the new electrospray thruster are designed to explore deeper into the Solar System and beyond, Lozano also highlighted the technology’s possible applications closer to home. For example, satellites equipped with both technologies could rapidly respond to environmental or climate changes in real time with a speed and efficiency unavailable with current propulsion options.
“Say there’s a storm coming, and you’d want to deploy your constellation of small satellites to observe over one location,” the researcher explained. “You could choose to send them quickly or slowly, depending on the nature of the observation.”
“And the only way to do that is if you have two propulsion systems, which is now possible,” he added.
Although the mission will not launch before November, Bruno noted that a successful test could allow engineers to consider missions they never thought possible.
“Now that we know our thrusters work with ASCENT, we can start thinking of all the ways we can make them even better,” the researcher explained.
The study “Performance Characterization of Electrospray Thrusters with Energetic Ionic Liquid Monopropellant” was published in the Journal of Propulsion and Power.
Christopher Plain is a Science Fiction and Fantasy novelist and Head Science Writer at The Debrief. Follow and connect with him on X, learn about his books at plainfiction.com, or email him directly at christopher@thedebrief.org.
The global space industry is expanding rapidly, with thousands of new satellites expected to enter orbit in the coming years. These spacecraft will support a wide range of activities, including internet services, Earth observation, scientific research, and even space tourism. While this growth promises many benefits, scientists are becoming increasingly concerned about its environmental impact. […]
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Researchers have created a smart wound dressing that can sense when harmful bacteria are present and respond by releasing antibiotics only when needed. Biomedical engineers at Brown University have created a wound dressing that releases antibiotics only when harmful bacteria are detected. In a new study, the team found that the material may quickly eliminate [...]
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