| | ESA Portal - ESA accelerates towards a new space thruster |
 | | The new ESA study, performed as part of ESA’s Ariadna academic research programme in association with Ecole Polytechnique, Paris, confirms the Australian findings by showing that under carefully controlled conditions, the double layer could be formed and remains stable, allowing the constant acceleration of charged particles in a beam. |
 | | Calculations suggest that a helicon double layer thruster would take up a little more space than the main electric thruster on ESA’s SMART-1 mission, yet it could potentially deliver many times more thrust at higher powers of up to 100 kW whilst giving a similar fuel efficiency. |
 | | In the next steps, ESA will now construct a detailed computer simulation of the plasma in and around the thruster and use the laboratory results to verify its accuracy, so that the in-space performance can be fully assessed and larger high power experimental thrusters can be investigated in the future. |
| www.esa.int /esaCP/SEM6HSVLWFE_index_0.html (673 words) |