A couple of weeks ago, we were reporting on the absurd space race by Elon Musk’s SpaceX company and Jeff Bezos’ dark horse challenger Blue Origin.
But these dueling giants aren’t the only ones involved in rapid innovation for deep space.
BBC today reports on a South African company called Hypernova Space Technologies that’s working on specific thruster programs for small satellites. It’s not a household name like SpaceX or Blue Origin, but it could have its own mark on space exploration in the years to come.
The idea is that equipping nanosatellites with thrusters and enabling mobility could help with the problem of space trash.
Since SpaceX is due to send many thousands of satellites (42,000?) into space on its own, and other parties will also be designing their own systems, there will be lots of tiny satellites in orbit.
BBC business reporter Elna Schutz describes a process where NASA had considered but abandoned a program for similar thrusters and innovator Jonathan Lun picked up the thread, developing solid metal fuel systems that can allow autonomous satellites to move and even dock with each other.
Hypernova plans to participate in a 2022 mission with a Bulgarian company called Endurosat, and is collaborating with the Electrical and Electronic Engineering department at Stellenbosch University, according to Shutz’ coverage.
“Looking much further in to the future, Mr Lun is confident that it would be possible to scale-up Hypernova’s thruster technology so it could potentially be used for much bigger satellites and more ambitious missions,” Schutz writes. “He is even hopeful that using metal as a fuel will facilitate bigger opportunities for the industry as a whole because thrusters could potentially be powered using substances found in space – both substances mined in-situ, or collected from space debris, for instance.”
As for solid metal fuel technologies, the precedent has been set.
“Solid propellants are mainly used in gun and rocket propulsion applications,” write scientists explaining the phenomenon in an academic paper. “They are very energetic and produce high temperature gaseous products on combustion. The high material density of solid propellants leads to high energy density (The energy produced by a unit mass of a propellant is called its energy density) needed for producing the required propulsive force.”
Look for these types of small satellite programs as our collective space program evolves.
