Members' lecture
Thursday, July 29th, 2004, at 7:30pm
in the Kerr Grant lecture theatre,
Physics building, University of Adelaide
Dr Christine Charles
Plasma Research Laboratory
Research School of Physical Sciences and Engineering
The Australian National University
"From aurorae to Mars, an electric double layer powers the newest space plasma engine."
Electric double layers are like cliffs of potential that can energise charged particles falling through them. They exist in the plasma environment of the earth and the stars and can cause phenomena as diverse as aurorae, luminous draperies in the polar sky, and electromagnetic radiation from rotating neutron stars called pulsars. We have discovered such a double layer in our laboratory plasma systems and measured the energy of the highly supersonic ions it has accelerated. This ion acceleration can be used for thrust in a space craft. The Plasma Research Laboratory (Australian National University) is developing a prototype of the Helicon Double Layer Thruster (HDLT), a radically different space plasma engine for interplanetary travel (Mars) and attitude control of earth orbit satellites, in collaboration with the CRC for Satellite Systems and AUSPACE and funded by a DEST Innovation access grant. The testing campaigns will be carried out at the European Space Agency development center (ESTEC, Holland). The HDLT is simple, has no moving parts, no electrodes and no need for a neutraliser. Both the research (CHI KUNG experimental reactor) and development (HDLT prototype) efforts are being carried out in parallel by a team of scientists and Ph D students in collaboration with astrophysicists, rocket scientists, and plasma physicists around the world.
