Benchmark wins AFRL award to develop thrusters for ASCENT
SAN FRANCISCO – Benchmark Place Units won a $2.81 million U.S. Air Drive Exploration Laboratory contract to go on development and tests of thrusters working on Superior Spacecraft Energetic Non-Poisonous, ASCENT, gasoline.
The two-yr award announced Aug. 29 was Benchmark’s next AFRL Sprint award. AFRL issued a Broad Company Announcement in 2019 termed Place Propulsion Study and Innovation for Neutralizing Satellite Threats, identified as Dash, searching for proposals of interest to AFRL’s House Propulsion Research Department.
Less than the new AFRL-funded program, Benchmark is developing a 22 Newton thruster for ASCENT sizzling-hearth demonstrations. In addition, Burlington, Vermont-centered Benchmark will deliver a preliminary layout of a 100 Newton thruster assembly in 2025.
Optimizing for Size, Body weight and Longevity
With funding from its initial Sprint award, Benchmark designed and shown a prototype thruster that burns ASCENT fuel without a catalyst. The prototype thruster was a proof of strategy and was not optimized for spaceflight.
“In this phase, we’re coming up with a thruster that you can apply to an operational mission,” Jake Teufert, Benchmark main technology officer, instructed SpaceNews. “Now, bodyweight matters and longevity issues.”
ASCENT Through the Decades
ASCENT was very first released in 2019 on NASA’s Green Propellant Infusion Mission. NASA’s Lunar Flashlight, a cubesat introduced in 2022 to observe h2o ice deposits on the moon, was also driven by ASCENT.
“Years of operate have been place into operationalizing ASCENT, a superior-efficiency, storable monopropellant that has the prospect to maximize mission capability further than what is provided by hydrazine,” Teufert reported. “With this contract, we’re having ASCENT from lessen-thrust demonstrators and scaling that up to wherever it is addressable for each individual mission that the DoD at present performs” with hydrazine.
State-of-the-art Propellants Team
Benchmark also is creating an Advanced Propellants Team led by Michael Martin, a mechanical engineer with a PhD from Texas A&M College, to take a look at a variety of nontoxic chemical, electric and hybrid propulsion methods.
The new group will “look at all these new monopropellants that are coming out and other bipropellants and produce both thrusters that can benefit from them but also methods to modify present propellants,” Martin said. “For instance, this thruster that we’re establishing for AFRL has a prospective to be used with other monopropellants that are at the moment obtainable in Europe and Japan. You could conclude up owning family members of thrusters utilizing the diverse monopropellants.”
U.S. Global Traffic in Arms Rules (ITAR) avert the export of ASCENT. The potential to use distinct propellants could pave the way to overseas sales of new Benchmark thrusters.
Benchmark employs “non-poisonous propulsion gurus who will open the door even wider for ASCENT use, as we also explore bringing in other underutilized and promising eco-friendly chemical, electric and hybrid technologies to power the room economy,” Martin claimed in a statement.
Tactical Responsiveness
Martin, who has worked with ASCENT for additional than 3 decades, mentioned, “what I genuinely appreciated about it is that I can have on a lab coat and gloves to operate with this propellant. It is also effortless to store and transport.”
In contrast working with hydrazine calls for Self Contained Atmospheric Safety Ensemble or SCAPE suits.
Teufert added that ASCENT will be “particularly powerful and important” for responsive place applications, exactly where satellites may well be saved on the floor or in an orbital warehouse.
ASCENT “is a propellant you can load into the satellite that is sitting down on a shelf ready to be built-in at a moment’s recognize,” Teufert reported. “You just cannot do that with a hydrazine system.”
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SAN FRANCISCO – Benchmark Place Units won a $2.81 million U.S. Air Drive Exploration Laboratory contract to go on development and tests of thrusters working on Superior Spacecraft Energetic Non-Poisonous, ASCENT, gasoline.
The two-yr award announced Aug. 29 was Benchmark’s next AFRL Sprint award. AFRL issued a Broad Company Announcement in 2019 termed Place Propulsion Study and Innovation for Neutralizing Satellite Threats, identified as Dash, searching for proposals of interest to AFRL’s House Propulsion Research Department.
Less than the new AFRL-funded program, Benchmark is developing a 22 Newton thruster for ASCENT sizzling-hearth demonstrations. In addition, Burlington, Vermont-centered Benchmark will deliver a preliminary layout of a 100 Newton thruster assembly in 2025.
Optimizing for Size, Body weight and Longevity
With funding from its initial Sprint award, Benchmark designed and shown a prototype thruster that burns ASCENT fuel without a catalyst. The prototype thruster was a proof of strategy and was not optimized for spaceflight.
“In this phase, we’re coming up with a thruster that you can apply to an operational mission,” Jake Teufert, Benchmark main technology officer, instructed SpaceNews. “Now, bodyweight matters and longevity issues.”
ASCENT Through the Decades
ASCENT was very first released in 2019 on NASA’s Green Propellant Infusion Mission. NASA’s Lunar Flashlight, a cubesat introduced in 2022 to observe h2o ice deposits on the moon, was also driven by ASCENT.
“Years of operate have been place into operationalizing ASCENT, a superior-efficiency, storable monopropellant that has the prospect to maximize mission capability further than what is provided by hydrazine,” Teufert reported. “With this contract, we’re having ASCENT from lessen-thrust demonstrators and scaling that up to wherever it is addressable for each individual mission that the DoD at present performs” with hydrazine.
State-of-the-art Propellants Team
Benchmark also is creating an Advanced Propellants Team led by Michael Martin, a mechanical engineer with a PhD from Texas A&M College, to take a look at a variety of nontoxic chemical, electric and hybrid propulsion methods.
The new group will “look at all these new monopropellants that are coming out and other bipropellants and produce both thrusters that can benefit from them but also methods to modify present propellants,” Martin said. “For instance, this thruster that we’re establishing for AFRL has a prospective to be used with other monopropellants that are at the moment obtainable in Europe and Japan. You could conclude up owning family members of thrusters utilizing the diverse monopropellants.”
U.S. Global Traffic in Arms Rules (ITAR) avert the export of ASCENT. The potential to use distinct propellants could pave the way to overseas sales of new Benchmark thrusters.
Benchmark employs “non-poisonous propulsion gurus who will open the door even wider for ASCENT use, as we also explore bringing in other underutilized and promising eco-friendly chemical, electric and hybrid technologies to power the room economy,” Martin claimed in a statement.
Tactical Responsiveness
Martin, who has worked with ASCENT for additional than 3 decades, mentioned, “what I genuinely appreciated about it is that I can have on a lab coat and gloves to operate with this propellant. It is also effortless to store and transport.”
In contrast working with hydrazine calls for Self Contained Atmospheric Safety Ensemble or SCAPE suits.
Teufert added that ASCENT will be “particularly powerful and important” for responsive place applications, exactly where satellites may well be saved on the floor or in an orbital warehouse.
ASCENT “is a propellant you can load into the satellite that is sitting down on a shelf ready to be built-in at a moment’s recognize,” Teufert reported. “You just cannot do that with a hydrazine system.”