Launching a satellite involves facing lots of problems. Some are related with design, others with the mechanical part of the unit, but nowadays the harshest one is probably the financial field. The cost satellite's technolgy involves is not affordable by everybody. In fact, space shuttles were mainly focused on being reusable and so, cheaper.
This is the reason why small satellites are now playing a crucial role in space agencies. Though they're not a panacea, research is discovering rather interesting facts about these gadgets.
“At the moment, nanosatellites are stuck in their orbits", explains Herbert Shea, coordinator of the European MicroThrust project and director of EPFL’s Microsystems for Space Technologies Laboratory.
This researcher at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne is one of the heads of a revolutionary project which propels a satellite not by burning fuel but by expelling it.
After six months of acceleration, the microsatellite’s speed increases from 24,000 km/h, its launch speed, to 42,000 km/h. The acceleration is only about a tenth of a millimeter per square second, which translates into zero to 100 km/h in 77 hours.
“We calculated that in order to reach lunar orbit, a 1-kg nanosatellite with our motor would travel for about six months and consume just 100 milliliters of fuel,” explains Muriel Richard, a scientist in EPFL’s Swiss Space Center. In the following video Herbert Shea explains their most recent invention.
Via | EPFL
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