HUNTSVILLE – The Electric Propulsion Club at the University of Alabama in Huntsville recently traveled to Milan, Italy, to present STARGATE, an experimental gridded ion thruster developed by the group, at the 75th International Astronautical Congress (IAC).
The group’s STARGATE team consists entirely of UAH undergraduates and is an independent student research organization working in the fields of electric propulsion (EP) and plasma physics at UAH.
In recent years, the proliferation of small satellites in Earth orbit has led to an unprecedented demand for small-scale low-power electric propulsion for satellite systems. EP systems offer a wide range of capabilities otherwise difficult or impossible in conventional spacecraft systems, including advances such as autonomous station keeping, collision avoidance, rendezvous, attitude control, orbit modification and forced deorbiting.
The event in Italy boasted over 11,000 attendees representing over 120 countries, as well as the heads of 60 national space agencies across the world, including theadministrator and deputy administrator of NASA, and the United Nations Office of Outer Space Affairs…