MOSCOW. Sept 16 (Interfax) - The Kurchatov Institute is to develop a prototype electrodeless plasma thruster (EPT) by December 2021, according to data from the SPARK-Marketing system.
Work has been commissioned by Nauka and Innovatsii (Science and Innovation), a Rosatom subsidiary, a draft agreement says.
For 750 million rubles, the institute is to create a mockup EPT with a electrical capacity of up to 100 kW to research main characteristics (maximum thrust: 3 Newtons, maximum specific impulse: 5,000 seconds) on an upgraded E-1 bench in pulse mode.
In addition, the institute will design a prototype flight variant of the engine and its test bench.
Under the agreement, the Kurchatov Institute is to formulate technical specification for the bench to provide for work on a one-megawatt plasma engine.
Work should result in the creation and test of a laboratory mockup engine with a superconductive magnetic system, and the development of its flight variant.
The need for plasma engines is due to the forthcoming exploration of deep space. The current chemically-fueled rocket engines are effective for putting spacecraft into orbit but not on long flights, which require economic use of the ejection mass and engines with a faster pulse, which is unachievable by liquid propellant rockets. "A substantial increase of the speed of expiration of a propellant requires an increase of its specific energy content, i.e. transition into a plasma state," the draft agreement said.
At present, the most widespread engines are the ion thruster (mainly in the United States) and the stationary plasma (hall-effect) engine (mainly in Russia and other countries). However, they are low-capacity and used mainly for orbit correction on satellites around the earth.
"The problem on the agenda is to create a powerful plasma rocket engines capable of solving much larger-scale problems of exploring outer-space resources," the document said.
The biggest advances in terms of practical solutions to this problem have been made by the U.S. company AdASTRA under NASA's patronage. Its Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket (VASIMR) project has developed a prototype flight engine which is already in the final stages of ground tests, after which a special spacecraft will be built for its tests in space.