New Iodine-Based Plasma Thruster Tested in Orbit
Freeman and AnonTechie write:
https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/11/new-iodine-based-plasma-thruster-tested-in-orbit/
Most people are probably familiar with iodine through its role as a disinfectant. But if you stayed awake through high school chemistry, then you may have seen a demonstration where powdered iodine was heated. Because its melting and boiling points are very close together at atmospheric pressures, iodine will readily form a purple gas when heated. At lower pressures, it'll go directly from solid to gas, a process called sublimation.
That, as it turns out, could make it the perfect fuel for a form of highly efficient spacecraft propulsion hardware called ion thrusters. While it has been considered a promising candidate for a while, a commercial company called ThrustMe is now reporting that it has demonstrated an iodine-powered ion thruster in space for the first time.
[...] The big downside is that it's corrosive, which forced ThrustMe to use ceramics for most of the material that it would come into contact with.
Journal Reference:
Dmytro Rafalskyi, Javier Martinez Martinez, Lui Habl, et al. In-orbit demonstration of an iodine electric propulsion system [open], Nature (DOI: 10.1038/s41586-021-04015-y)
Original Submission #1 Original Submission #2
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