New Satellite Engine Could Use Earth's Atmosphere to Stay in Orbit Indefinitely

New Satellite Engine Could Use Earth's Atmosphere to Stay in Orbit Indefinitely scitechdaily.com

A satellite engine that uses atmospheric gases as fuel shows promise in laboratory tests and modeling, but its performance on a mission remains unproven.

68 points•GordonS•4 days ago•15 comments•

#engine #satellite #satellite engine #orbit #earths #atmosphere #indefinitely #new satellite

15 comments

chris_va4 days ago

Very much not a new idea: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Very_low_Earth_orbit

Though fun to see. More interesting than the station keeping (indefinite part) is that it enables ~100km orbits, which are ~5x closer than what remote sensing satellites use today and thus could get 5x the resolution for the same instrument.

t2r31214 days ago

Yes, the article also points out that the idea is not new, but rather that this research was focused on addressing practical problems, such as corrosion of the engine's parts.

idiotsecant4 days ago

An Alcubierre drive is not a new idea either, but if someone demonstrated one I would be mightily impressed.

That is an extreme example for multiple reasons, of course, but the point is that the gulf between idea and working thing is often monstrous. Ideas are cheap, implementation is hard.

Someone4 days ago

> ~5x closer than what remote sensing satellites use today and thus could get 5x the resolution for the same instrument.

I would think a bit less. You won’t get a factor of 5 decrease in atmosphere to watch through and I would guess you’d get more vibration.

bottlepalm4 days ago

Ideas require a ton of research to transform into reality.

MeteorMarc4 days ago

100km is the height where meteoroids ablate. You must mean 100k miles and even there the largest meteors start to become visible.

Indeed at the bottom tfb quotes heights of 190-250km for model calculations.

PowerElectronix4 days ago

The thing is is this kind of engine does better than a regular one +big tank of propeller in the lifetime of a VLEO satellite, which due to newer regulation by the US is 5 years, so you don't really need eve a big tank

Danox4 days ago

I would hope technology is moving into that direction, because the current primitive system is not sustainable. Also note, this will mean cooperation with all of your so-called allies, uh-oh…

metalman4 days ago

'contactless, neutralizer-less radio-frequency (RF) helicon plasma thruster'

fairly sure that wins just on the absolute impossibility of creating an acronym , just all business

works in wind tunnel testing.

tocs34 days ago

It may never work then:)

NetMageSCW4 days ago

Feels like someone SpaceX would be very interested in hiring.

Too bad this wasn’t available for SWIFT.

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