Oz student smashes NASA’s fuel efficiency record

<g data-gr-id="23">An Australia</g>n university student has developed a new kind of ion space drive that has reportedly smashed NASA’s current fuel efficiency record.

Ion propulsion is a technology that involves ionising a gas to propel a craft. Instead of a spacecraft being propelled with standard chemicals, the gas Xenon (which is like neon or helium, but heavier) is given an electrical charge, or ionised.

NASA’s current record holder for fuel efficiency is its High Power Electric Propulsion, or HiPEP, system, which allows 9,600 (+/- 200) seconds of specific impulse. However, the new drive developed by University of Sydney doctoral candidate in Physics, Paddy Neumann, has achieved up to 14,690 (+/- 2,000), according to student newspaper Honi Soit.

Furthermore NASA’s HiPEP runs on Xenon <g data-gr-id="17">gas,</g> while the Neumann Drive can be powered on a number of different metals, the most efficient tested so far being magnesium.

The drive works through a reaction between electricity and metal, where electric arcs strike the chosen fuel (in this case, magnesium) and cause ions to spray, which are then focused by a magnetic nozzle to produce thrust. Unlike current industry standard chemical propulsion devices, which operate through short, high-powered bursts of thrust and then coasting, Neumann’s drive runs on a continuous rhythm of short and light bursts, preserving the fuel source.