Nebula Public Library

The main objectives of this project were to develop a thruster prototype based on magnetic powder electrostatic propulsion and to test it in vacuum with direct thrust measurements. The aim was to check the robustness of the concept and to measure and calculate important performance parameters such as thrust and specific impulse, to allow a comparison with other thruster technologies. This project demonstrated for the first time the feasibility of electrostatic propulsion based on powder emission.

A major challenge in the field of control is to achieve reliable, aggressive, high-speed control of autonomous vehicles. In space, this may involve spacecraft that need to land under harsh conditions, or even – in an extreme scenario – negotiating asteroid debris fields at high speeds. On Earth, the exemplar task that draws most attention currently is high-speed autonomous flight of drones. The application of optimal control on board limited platforms has been severely hindered by the large computational requirements of current state-of-the-art implementations.