Precision Electrospray Thruster Assembly (PETA)

New low cost, low volume, low power, rugged electrospray thrusters will be ideal as actuators for precision thrusting, if provided with precision high voltage power supplies. The small thrusters show minimum thrusts of 1.2 nanoNewton, and thrusts scalable in a wide range to hundreds of microNewtons, with an ISp of 3500 sec. We propose to develop and test a high-precision high-voltage power supply optimized for fine control of the thrusters, and designed to support accurate formation flying of space telescope elements, and precision alignment and stabilization of space platforms. The HV supply design will be developed into a cubesat format Precision Electrospray Thruster Assembly including thrusters, and ready for flight tests of the technology. At the end of Phase II PETA units will be provided as protoflight avionics to be flown, tested and qualified.

PETA will be applicable to NASA projects requiring precision thrusting for accurate and stable sensor pointing, accurate flight formations or precise alignment and orientation of systems or free-flying subsystems. There are multiple applications for space interferometric observatories, for gravitational waves detectors, for geodetic "free falling" observatories and for large telescopes with free flying mirrors or focal plane arrays. PETA also applies to cubesat and nanosat experiments, opening new opportunities for precision pointing and well controlled clusters of sensors, large synthetic antennas and automatized rendezvous and assembly of larger structure from small modules.

PETA is also applicable to missions from other US government agencies, and for fine thrust control of commercial satellites. Accurate formation flying facilitated by PETA opens new areas of observation of interest to different agencies.

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.