Launch provider news

Our launch provider, Interorbital Systems, recently appeared on The Space Show. The podcast is here. (Rules say we can’t really transcribe it, so you’ll have to listen.)

Key news includes a change to the launch location, another upcoming engine test, options to do suborbital testing (including the prized ability to leave the launch rocket), modular rocket motors, rocket motor tradeoffs, and insider information about the politics of rocket building. A trivia question: How much does a launch license cost?

I am particularly intrigued by the idea of using a suborbital rocket to test the ion engine. A suborbital flight provides 10-15 minutes of microgravity in outer space, which should be plenty to do testing without the hassle of power conservation needed for longer, solar-powered missions. All other providers I’ve seen will not eject payload, meaning we couldn’t test the effectiveness of an engine. Sure, we won’t get the engine back, but maybe we could turn that into a feature, learning limits for the longer orbital mission by running the engine destructively.

Presentation & Status update

Our presentation with mission details is now on SlideShare at:

FRETS1 Satellite from wes_faler

Interorbital, our launch provider, is hard at work on their launch vehicle.  They had a very successful test of their new rocket motor and posted a video on YouTube:

and a nice high-res photo of the burn:

http://www.interorbital.com/Main%20Engine%20Test%20Photo%20Large_1.htm

We’re preparing for the upcoming Tampa Mini-Maker Faire in March, 2013.  I’m quite anxious to meet my new maker neighbors!

Choosing an engine design

It’s time to make some final choices on the engine design.  Lacking time and money to build every engine design our imagination conceives, we’ve run a number of simulations. Each simulation is a thin 2D slice of an engine – much like a slice in a loaf of bread – presented with a burst of plasma.  Each simulation takes about a week on an NVidia Tesla GPU and we use a combination of Processing and R to visualize the results.  Sorry, we can’t share the visualizations yet as doing so would affect a patent.

Many scenarios were tried in short runs and the seven most promising were simulated in detail.  Technically, an additional “null” case was also simulated.  In an ion engine, the “null” case is a simple thermal expansion of the plasma without any other effects other than exit nozzle geometry.  This basic thermal expansion produced much lower momentum than the 7 designs simulated.  That brings up a key performance indicator of an engine: the total momentum it imparts to the spacecraft.  As a pulsed design, each pulse imparts a bit of momentum.  The time average of this momentum is the engine’s average force.  Let’s look at the total momentum for each design choice:

Total momentum imparted by each engine design.

Interpreting this is pretty interesting.  Models D and F go strongly negative, very strongly negative.  This makes them unacceptable.  Why?  Negative momentum means movement backwards, towards the exhaust plume – an unsustainable situation.  This leaves models C and E.  Both converge to the same total momentum, though E converges sooner because it exhausts its plasma burst sooner.

There is another source of data to help make the choice.  We can also look at the momentum on the charged plates within the engine.  These plates contribute their momentum to the above totals.

Momentum due to charged plates

Model C’s charged plates have negative momentum, meaning it is gradually eroding the overall momentum gain from the engine.  Model E gives the same total momentum and never backtracks on its gains, making model E the chosen design.

Now, just what can we expect from a model E engine?  It creates 1.75e-9 kg m/s of momentum every 3.52e-5 seconds.  From the simulation, each slice is 1e-4 meters (0.1 mm) and the total engine has 100 of these slices.  The engine’s force is then (1.75e-9 / 3.52e-5) * 100 = 4.97e-5 N, or about 5 mN.  A 5 mN thrust is quite reasonable, and seems quite nice in a 1 cm engine.

What affect will this engine have upon the satellite? We’ll mount the engine 2.5 cm off center of the long axis so that it’s thrust will spin the satellite.  The spin rate will increase with each plasma burst and eventually get out of the noise band of gyroscope sensors.  (We don’t use accelerometers to sense thrust because it is so low that we fear any accelerometer sensitive enough to detect the thrust would not survive the shock of launch.)  The 750 gram TubeSat’s angular momentum vectors [Ixx, Iyy, Izz] are estimated to be [7.5938E-04, 1.3878E-03, 1.3878E-03].  This makes the angular momentum change per pulse to be (1.75e-9 * 100 * 0.025) / 1.3878E-03 = 3.15e-6 radians/second/pulse = 1.81e-4 degrees/second/pulse.  So, in 5,535 pulses the satellite will have added 1 degree/second to its rotation.  Its forward velocity will have also changed by ((1.75e-9 * 100) / 0.750) * 5535 = 1.29e-3 m/s.  With 75 mm^3 of fuel available, we estimate 4958 degrees/second for rotation and 6.4 m/s final delta V.  (Clearly, 4958 degrees/second is far too fast, but that’s another post.)

Closed Cell Foams

Propellant.  Engines need it and our ion engine is no exception.  Ours is an electrostatic ion engine that accelerates both ions and electrons, using lasers to boost the plasma flow rate through a novel nozzle.  The question then becomes, how do we get the raw material for a plasma?  The plan so far has been to use a small cylinder of compressed gas – perhaps an 8 gram nitrous oxide cylinder commonly used to make whipped cream to order.  The gas is stable and easy to obtain.  The only projected difficulty was metering the gas flow in orbit as most valves are simply too large physically for our satellite.

That was the plan until we looked back at our ConOps documentation.  After we ship our satellite to the launch provider, we can’t expect them to do substantial technical work installing our gas cylinder and checking flows immediately prior to launch.  We have to plan that they will only remove our “Remove Before Flight” pins and that our satellite could spend a month in desert temperatures.  It doesn’t seem practical to presume o-rings, screw threads, and a homemade micro valve will stand up to those temperature swings without leaking.

Our new idea: use a closed cell foam filled with pressurized nitrogen, vaporizing the supporting plastic and releasing the enclosed nitrogen using a spark system similar to that used by Pulsed Plasma Thrusters (PPTs).  PPTs create an arc across the face of a solid Teflon bar, turning a few micrograms of Teflon into plasma.  The plasma moves along the PPT’s cathode and anode by Lorentz forces, much the same way that a rail gun accelerates its conducting projectile.

We won’t be building a PPT of course, but will use the inspiration of eroding a fuel bar, making some plastic-based plasma and nitrogen-based plasma from a temperature stable storage media.

Elevator Pitch

Imagine you find yourself in an elevator with someone you know has the money and time to help start your new business.  You’ve only seconds to make your pitch, hoping to pique their interest enough to get a real presentation opportunity.  This is the “elevator pitch” concept.  People spend months refining their speeches and there are even high value competitions for these short bits of business-poetry.  What follows isn’t really poetry or even short, but was meant to start that journey.  Hopefully it will help explain our project.

Short Description
We’re build and flying a TubeSat-style satellite to test new effects on ion engine performance and power requirements.

Introduction
Ion engines are fantastically fuel efficient but their thrust is too low for general use.  By finding ways to increase thrust and lower power consumption, ion engines can be used for more mission profiles.  This is especially important when fueling a craft from expensive local resources such as on a lunar base.

Three new effects on ion engine performance will be tested by FRETS1 – my TubeSat-style satellite flying in early 2012.

The experiment tests three techniques:  one to increase thrust density beyond the traditional Child-Langmuir limit, another to reduce plasma formation power requirements, and one to reduce exhaust neutralization power requirements.

Supporting the experiment is an adaptive machine learning algorithm that maximizes the impact of the effects and adjusts alignment of internal parts to compensate for thermal effects and unwanted internal ablation.

A few details
Extracting charge from a plasma is governed by space-charge limits. In a low density plasma, the limit is described by the Child-Langmuir law:

where:

• j is the current density (A/m^2)
• e0 is the permittivity of free space (F/m)
• e is the charge of a single electron or singly charged ion (C)
• M is the mass of a single charge carrying electron or ion (kg)
• V is the voltage drop across the extraction region (Volts)
• d is the distance across the extraction region (m)

An ion engine’s Isp is also set by its voltage:

where:

• Isp is the specific impulse (seconds)
• v is the exhaust velocity (m/s)
• g is earth gravitational acceleration (9.81 m/s/s)
• e is the charge of a single electron or singly charged ion (C)
• M is the mass of a single charge carrying electron or ion (kg)
• V is the voltage drop across the extraction region (Volts)

Work by others on laser/plasma fusion has shed light on how to decouple these, raising the current density, and therefore the thrust density, without altering Isp.  Researchers have shown 1,000x the Child-Langmuir flow rates in lab conditions.

Adapting this work to ion propulsion and scaling it to realistic power requirements is a goal of this project.

Project Steps
The major steps needed, some of which are already well underway, are:

• Initial concepts
• Project feasibility
• Market feasibility
• R&D of Effects and Systems
• 2 near-space balloon launches to test equipment
• Flight and Ground operations

Challenges Ahead
Power and mass.  Both are extremely limited on the TubeSat platform.  Mission obstacles stem from these two:

• High power is needed to affect the engine’s plasma.  TubeSats have extremely little power available.  Possible solution: rapid discharge capacitors to produce pulses.
• Holding mechanical alignment over temperature extremes and launch vibration could require massive supports.  Possible solution: piezo-electric positioning tied to the core learning algorithm.
• Fuel consists of compressed gas.  Managing the flow of the expanding gas requires massive parts.  Lowering the gas pressure makes the issue easier but reduces the amount of fuel available.  Further research is needed, likely by continuing work with the model engineering community, especially those building working miniature steam engines.

More Help Needed
Advice and information is needed in at least these areas:

• Market information on forecasted use of low thrust engines.
• Thrust stand design.
• Financial sources for a second, larger version.
• Vibration dampening and testing.
• Resources for micro-machining of gas flow channels.
• Data on response of various sensors in the LEO environment.

TubeSat Power Estimates

We’ve done some calculations to estimate the amount of solar power available to our satellite.  As you can imagine, it varies greatly with orientation.

There are 8 solar panels, each with 6 solar cells.  Each solar cell is 2.277 cm^2 and converts the 1,366 W/m^2 of solar radiation with 27% efficiency.  With perfect alignment to the sun, that gives 0.49 W for one of the 8 solar panels.  However, perfect alignment is rare and staying perfectly aligned would probably melt the solder holding the solar cells in place.  So, we consider several possible orientations in orbit and calculate the second-by-second orientation to the sun.

We consider first a “flat” orientation (aka “bullet” orientation) where the satellite’s nose is toward the sun at one pole, tail to the sun at the other pole, broadside to the sun at the equator, with the satellite long axis aligned to the orbit direction.  This orientation takes in 2,042 Joules during its half-orbit facing the sun, for an average of 0.75 W during the half-orbit.  Most power comes in near the equator diminishing near the poles.

Next we consider a “radial” orientation where the broadside is to the sun at each pole and the nose to the sun at the equator, always keeping a narrow end pointed toward Earth.  This orientation takes in 2,047 J for an average of 0.75 W.  No power comes in near the equator with most coming in near the poles.

Last, we consider a “sun seeker” orientation where the broadside is always facing the sun, likely combined with a “BBQ” roll along the long axis for cooling.  This orientation brings in 3,208 J, averaging 1.18 W, during its half-orbit.  Power is constant throughout.

Conversion of any light reflected from Earth will only increase these numbers.  We’ll likely revisit these as we do thermal calculations which must consider Earth visible and IR reflection.

What do these numbers mean for the mission?  Basically, with communications and CPU drawing a few watts, it means we can’t run everything at once.  We’ll have to run communications infrequently anyway according to international law – 10% duty cycle for transmissions.  This takes the 1 W of communication to 0.1 W on average, needing 0.2 W during the sun-side to ensure we’ve banked power for use on the dark side.  That leaves 0.15-0.25 W on average available for everything else.  We’ll have to design the system to bank energy, waking up for a second or two to check conditions and running experiments only when energy is available.  My best estimate right now is 5 minutes of engine operation every 9 hours.  We’ll know for sure after we build the onboard power supply.

The full calculations are here: TubeSat Power Estimates

Maker Faire Detroit 2011

We’re less than a week away from Maker Faire Detroit.  Tick tock!

Today, we put together two satellites to show and finished planning the display.  Check out the Gallery tab above for pictures.

We’re trying to bring lessons learned from our great experience at the Ann Arbor Mini Maker Faire where we learned a lot about talking to people about satellites.  The first thing we learned was that satellite conversations are longer than we saw last year with our 3D display.  So much longer in fact that many people just reached in for a business card and wandered off.  We’re adding more self-serve information and a more informative take away piece.  That, and well, getting better at bringing people into a conversation already underway.

The second thing we learned was that most people don’t actually know what an ion engine is and that, to most people, “plasma” is a component of blood.  Many children claimed to know what plasma was, but got very confused when we told them we’re making plasma from air and electricity.  Very confused.  Especially confused when they hear plasma is a rocket fuel.  It’s probably best to just tell people what plasma is (in our context) rather than ask if they know already.  It made for some funny moments in hind sight but still, I offer my [grinning] apology to the parents that had awkward conversations afterward.

We hope to see everyone at Maker Faire Detroit where we’ll learn something new!