Jonathan

P. Kyle, Ph.D.
Marotta Controls Inc.


A personal design experience that I believe is closely related to Marotta
Controls area of expertise, space launch and satellite valves, is the summer research
I conducted in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. This project focused on replacing the cold
gas thrusters installed on the Synchronized Position Hold Engage and Reorient
Experimental Satellites (SPHERES) with an ion drag pump propulsion system.

SPHERES are a test bed for the validation of high-risk metrology, control, and
autonomy technologies for use in formation flight and autonomous docking,
rendezvous, and reconfiguration algorithms. The satellites use cold gas thrusters to
maneuver inside space vehicle cabins. SPHERES contain pressurized CO2 tanks and a
small solenoid on-off valve that can open and close when thrust is desired. It was
suggested by an Astronaut to replace the cold gas thrusters, which require
potentially hazardous pressurized tanks that need to be replaced frequently, with a
self-contained ion drag pump propulsion system.

Ion drag pumps are advantageous in that they only need an electric power
supply to operate and contain no movable parts. The schematic below is of a typical

ion drag pump. The drag pump produces thrust by creating a cloud of ions (via
electrodes that create a corona discharge) and accelerating this cloud to collide with
neutral air molecules. The velocity drift of the ions drags neutral air particles
along, creating a pressure difference that generates thrust. The amount of thrust
produced is dependent on a number of variables such as charge density in between
the two plates, the strength of the electric field applied, the current density, the
mobility of the ions, and the separation distance between the two electrodes.

For this project, the thrust was theoretically calculated from the electric
potential, electric field, charge density, and current density all in terms of the
displacement from one of the electrodes. For manufacturing, one end made of
stainless steel contained a wire mesh for collected the charged ions near the exhaust
while the other end was made out of aluminum that contained electro-chemically
etched needles for ionizing the surrounding air molecules. Alumina ceramic rods
were used to guide the two frames and setscrews secured them when the desired
distance was reached. To ensure that ions did not escape while traveling between
the two electrodes, the entire device was wrapped in Teflon foil. The foil is not
permeable and is a dielectric. With a supply voltage of around 12V, the device was
able to produce a thrust of roughly 2.5 mN, making it a viable candidate for
propulsion and attitude control for the SPHERES satellites.