First Firing of Air-Breathing Electric Thruster
6th March 2018
In a world-first, an ESA-led team has built and fired an electric thruster to ingest scarce air molecules from the top of the atmosphere for propellant, opening the way to satellites flying in very low orbits for years on end
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There are no valves or complex parts – everything works on a simple, passive basis. All that is needed is power to the coils and electrodes, creating an extremely robust drag-compensation system.
As best I can figure, this works similarly to the magnetohydrodynamic drive made famous in The Hunt For Red October.