The Little Rocket Engine That Could

Abstract

This paper highlights advancements of a research team in the field of miniature spacecrafts and development and advantages of CubeStats. CubeSats are space age hitchhikers, that is, miniature spacecraft that fly into orbit aboard rockets whose primary payloads are full-size satellites. Paulo Lozano and his team at MIT’s Space Propulsion Lab have developed a unique kind of rocket engine for these microsatellites. The trick to building a successful ion electrospray propulsion system is to increase thrust density by jamming together as many emitters as possible. Electrospray engines also differ greatly from another form of ion propulsion, plasma ion, which also eschews chemical combustion for the efficiency of the electron. A big advantage, when asking for permission to hitchhike a ride into orbit, is that ion electrospray propulsion engines cannot explode and destroy a rocket’s primary payload. A second advantage of ion engines is their modularity and, consequently, scalability.