High Thrust-Density Electrostatic Engines Project

The performance, and development and infusion rates of in-space electric propulsion (EP) systems must be increased, to be able to drastically increase operational capabilities of missions (via higher payload delivery capability, more rapid mission execution, etc.) Today these systems are: unaffordable for many applications; and there is no EP technology that is scalable from 1600s to >4000s at power levels of interest to the community. These issues are addressable by: increasing the thrust, power, and thrust-to-power ratio capability of EP systems; reducing the non-recurring engineering systems costs; and developing system architectures with performance characteristics that capture the broadest possible range of missions so that development & flight costs are amortized over multiple users. We believe these objectives can be achieved by developing the Next Generation Electric Propulsion Thruster (NGEPT); a GRC-patented modular EP device based on a new arrangement of relatively mature and proven technologies with the potential to yield revolutionary capabilities

The revolutionary aspect of the concept is that it is a single approach which may be qualified once and then configured for missions ranging from a few-kW class commercial satellites to MW-class crewed Mars missions, providing this flexibility at equivalent or higher performance levels & power densities to SOA.

This is a mature technology (TRL 7) — the realistic path in is usually NASA's Technology Transfer Program: licensing an existing NASA patent, or a Space Act Agreement to use NASA facilities/expertise directly. NASA also runs a startup licensing program with no upfront fee for companies formed to commercialize a specific NASA technology.

None of these are guaranteed paths for this specific project — TechPort itself doesn't have an "apply" button. Reaching out to the contact(s) above with a specific question is usually the fastest way to find out what's actually open.