Magnetoplasmadynamic Thruster - Problems With MPDT

Problems With MPDT

MPD thruster technology has been explored academically, but commercial interest has been low due to several remaining problems. One big problem is that power requirements on the order of hundreds of kilowatts are required for optimum performance. Current interplanetary spacecraft power systems (such as radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs)) and solar arrays are incapable of producing that much power. NASA's Project Prometheus reactor was expected to generate power in the hundreds of kilowatts range but was discontinued in 2005.

A project to produce a space-going nuclear reactor designed to generate 600 kilowatts of electrical power began in 1963 and ran for most of the 1960s in the USSR. It was to power a communication satellite which was in the end not approved. Nuclear reactors supplying kilowatts of electrical power (of the order of ten times more than current RTG power supplies) have been orbited by the USSR: RORSAT; and TOPAZ.

Plans to develop a megawatt-scale nuclear reactor for the use aboard a manned spaceship were announced in 2009 by Russian nuclear Kurchatov Institute, national space agency Roskosmos, and confirmed by the President of Russia in November 2009 address.

Another plan, proposed by Bradley C. Edwards, is to beam power from the ground. This plan utilizes 5 200 kW free electron lasers at 0.84 micrometres with adaptive optics on the ground to beam power to the MPD-powered spacecraft, where it is converted to electricity by GaAs photovoltaic panels. The tuning of the laser wavelength of 0.840 micrometres (1.48 eV per photon) and the PV panel bandgap of 1.43 eV to each other produces an estimated conversion efficiency of 59% and a predicted power density of up to 540 kW/m2. This would be sufficient to power a MPD upper stage, perhaps to lift satellites from LEO to GEO.

Another problem with MPD technology has been the degradation of cathodes due to evaporation driven by high current densities (in excess of 100 amps/cm^2). The use of lithium and barium propellant mixtures and multi-channel hollow cathodes has been shown in the laboratory to be a promising solution for the cathode erosion problem.