WPI Research is the research magazine of Worcester Polytechnic Institute. It contains news and features about graduate research in the arts and sciences, business, and engineering, along with notes about new grants, books, and faculty achievements.
Issue link: http://wpiresearch.epubxp.com/i/90696
PhD student Zachary Taillefer, left, and John Blandino work inside the vacuum chamber in WPI's aerospace engineering laboratories, preparing a test of an electric thruster, like the one illustrated on page 40. They are trying to find ways to extend the life of cathodes used in spacrcraft electric propulsion systems. Research Center. To understand how the cathode might wear out, they use a tiny probe to measure the properties of the plasma that the thruster emits. Analysis of the data gathered from the experiments may help engineers create a more durable cathode, or identify more optimal operating conditions, resulting in a more reliable thruster. "As you look at more and more ambitious missions, to the outer planets, to comets and asteroids, you need to be looking at increasing reliability," Blandino says. Bruce Pote directs an electric thruster program at Busek, an aerospace engineering company in Natick, Mass., that has worked with Blandino and Nikolaos Gatsonis, head of WPI's Aerospace Engineering Program, on federally funded research. Busek's thrusters have been installed on sat- ellites launched by the U.S. Air Force, and the company has received research grants and contracts from NASA, which is interested in using electric thrusters for missions to asteroids and the outer planets, or possibly a round trip to Mars. "It's almost what you would call an enabling feature of some of the work that they do," Pote says. "You just simply can't do those missions with a chemical rocket." While Busek focuses on applied research and devel- oping new products, Blandino and other WPI scientists conduct more basic research, what Pote calls the theoretical underpinnings of electric propulsion. "It's a really nice relationship that we have," he says, adding that a side benefit to the partnership is helping train potential recruits, since nearly one in four Busek employees is a WPI graduate. Taillefer, who stayed on for graduate work at WPI after completing his BS in aerospace engineering in 2011, spends much of his time these days depressurizing the vacuum chamber and analyzing data gathered from the cathode. While he might be working in a basement, he knows his research could be important for the future of space exploration. "Electric propulsion in general will be the link to longer duration missions," he says. "I'm glad to be making a small contribution to that." It is a contribution being pulled, quite literally, out of thin air. Q [41]