A “Green” Dual-Mode Engine is About to Give CubeSats the Best of Both Worlds

Rocket scientists have always faced a trade-off in propulsion technologies. Chemical rockets can provide lots of oomph, but burn through fuel so quickly they can only do so for a few minutes. Electric propulsion, on the other hand, can run for days, but the pushing power they provide is miniscule compared to their chemical cousins. A new paper in the Journal of Propulsion and Power from researchers at MIT describes a system that might be the best of both worlds - a propulsion system that includes an electrospray thruster that uses a chemical rocket propellant, and can seamlessly switch to a chemical rocket when needed.