Scientists of the Ad Astra Rocket Company have tested a revolutionary plasma rocket engine for a record time of more than four hours at the Costa Rica facility centre. Scientist are hoping that rocket engine would be eventually be cheaper than convention models and it will also reduce travel time for space missions.
Costa Rican born former NASA astronaut, Franklin Chang-Diaz, is leading the company. He is hoping that rocket engines to boost commercial spacecraft into higher orbits and stabilize the space stations. The plasma rocket engine will power a trip to Mars within two decades and reduces the travel time by about a third to around three months.
The engine will work by stripping electrons from hydrogen atoms and accelerates the resulting plasma in an electric field. This technique is known as Variable Specific-Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket (VASIMR) technology.
A VASIMR engineaccelerates continuously like conventional rockets, which generates all their thrust in the first few minutes of a mission and then coast to their destination. Thus, it reduces journey time and also provides a low level of artificial gravity for astronauts.
Ad Astra executive director Ronald Chang-Diaz, the astronaut’s brother, said,
There are significant challenges ahead, however. The first objective is to move small spacecraft in low orbit by 2010. Scientists at Ad Astra’s Houston laboratory are conducting tests aimed at boosting the engines overall power, while in Costa Rica they focus on endurance.
Image Credit: NASA
Via: New Scientist
