While SpaceX continued the testing phase for Starship and spread the enthusiasm for a real crew flight to Mars, an interesting magnetic push-rock concept developed by physics Fatima Ebrahimi at the US Department of Energy (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) conceived, the mission makes much more cost-effective.
The feasibility of safe, sustainable propulsion systems that will perform better than traditional chemical-based rocket engines during deep space travel, not only in our own solar system, but also one day perhaps to a distant galaxy outside the Milky Way, astrophysicists fall.
Ion propellers, once the standard acceleration method for imaginative science authors and now the preferred positioning engine for NASA scientists and engineers in their satellites, can have greater endurance and be much cheaper to use, but generate a small amount of thrust for acceleration. purposes. It’s not exactly a viable option for a trip to the Red Planet where hundreds of tons of spacecraft are moving across the sky.
Ebrahimi’s Princeton team has developed a new concept that involves using the same basic cosmic mechanism to eject solar flares beyond our sun. These violent eruptions consist of charged atoms and particles known as plasma, which are trapped in intense magnetic fields. Their findings were published in the online research website, Journal of Plasma Physics.
To harness this dynamic energy in an effective propulsion system, Ebrahimi directs a type of interaction called magnetic reconnection, where magnetic fields in highly charged plasma environments automatically restructure themselves to converge, separate, and converge again.
The effects of this cyclic reaction are an impressive powerhouse of kinetic energy, thermal energy and particle acceleration. This phenomenon is not limited to stars, but also occurs within the atmosphere of our planet and Tokamak fusion reactors, such as PPPL’s National Spherical Torus experiment.
This innovative thrust produces motion by ejecting both plasma particles and magnetic bubbles known as plasmoids, which increase the power to the propulsion.
“Long-distance travel takes months or years because the specific impulse of chemical rocket engines is very low, so the vessel takes a while to speed up,” explains Ebrahimi. “But if we make propellers based on magnetic reconnection, then we can conceivably complete long-distance transmissions in a shorter period of time. While other propulsion forces require heavy gas, made of atoms like xenon, you can use any type of gas you want in this concept.”
A magnetic thruster works in ways like modern ion thrusters that are increasingly found on a wide variety of probes and spacecraft. It works by charging a fuel base consisting of heavy atoms such as xenon, then entering an electric field and accelerating. In the intriguing concept of Ebrahmi, magnetic fields are recruited for the acceleration work.
Currently, computer simulations from PPPL computers and the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, California, indicate that magnetic reconnections can theoretically produce output speeds ten times faster than any electric drive systems in use today.
“This work is inspired by fusion work from the past, and it is the first time that plasmids and reconnection have been proposed for the propulsion of space,” Ebrahimi added. “The next step is to build a prototype!”