Electric Propulsion Magnets Ready for Space Tests

Nestled at the foot of a steep, forested hill, 16 kilometers outside Wellington, New Zealand, is a rather unassuming building; one among many on a research campus that was first established in the 1940s. From outside, there’s little to suggest that this is the birthplace of a remarkable piece of technology bound for the International Space Station (ISS) in the coming months. The building is home to the Paihau-Robinson Research Institute, part of Victoria University of Wellington. And the technology being developed there could one day reduce the space industry’s reliance on chemical rockets. “Our focus here is applied-field magnetoplasmadynamic [AF-MPD] thrusters. It’s a class of electric propulsion that uses an applied magnetic field to accelerate ions to extremely high speeds,” says Randy Pollock, the chief engineer for space at Paihau-Robinson, during a visit to its labs. This group isn’t the first to work on AF-MPD thrusters—the technology has been tinkered with since the 1970s—b ... Read full article.