Singapore company launches more fuel-efficient satellites

It wasn’t just brazilian satellite that SpaceX took to space. the mission 3 . carrier, carried out last week, also raised a satellite from the startup Aliena, which has a system fuel More efficient than the fuel mixtures known today.

The company, a startup from Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University, uses a Hall thruster, which uses plasma driven electric current. The technology was an invention of Aliena herself, and according to the company, it consumes a “fraction” of the energy needed for this type of operation.

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Every satellite needs an acceleration engine. Even those who are stationed in a fixed position in orbit Tera Engines usually fire to correct direction or stay within the specified trajectory if any deviation occurs. This is because the Earth’s atmosphere still has too much force to pull it back without these resources, causing it to pass through re-entry The atmosphere is burned and, at best, in the fall (the worst case is that they back off and hit the ground – a populated city, for example).

In the past, satellites had tons of weight and were gigantic in size, but technological development has allowed the miniaturization we know in computer processors to reach them as well – and today, we have an example of Cubesat, which are usually square in shape (10 x 10 x 10 x 10 cm) and weigh no more than 2 kilograms (2 kilograms).

However, current Hall thrusters are not suitable for smaller satellites, as they need about a thousand watts (W) to keep objects in orbit – this amount of power is reserved exclusively for larger satellites.

For this reason, the solution developed by Aliena “covers” this slot in an elegant and practical way, since it requires only 10 watts of power, and its design is easy to use in satellites, in proportions up to 10x10x10x10 cm – because it was not compared with the CubeSat useless.

The company accomplished this feat using the payment features by plasma, one of the four basic states of matter, which can exert motion with force on the scale of micronewtons—by comparison, the same amount of force an ant would exert to walk a few steps.

“With the space industry continuing to grow exponentially and rapidly, Aliena wants to meet the growing demand for space mobility with our plasma engines,” said Dr. Mark Lim Jianwei, co-founder and CEO of the company.

“[O espaço] It was once an emerging market, but we’ve seen a sudden explosion of space technology companies being consolidated to take advantage of the cost-effectiveness of small satellites and the accessibility of space in order to launch their own towers, which are sure to impact both Earth and extraterrestrial businesses. “, continued.

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