Ad Astra, a Texas-based aerospace company specializing in advanced plasma rocket propulsion technology, is contracted to launch from PSCA in late January or early February, he said. He said Kodiak may see “robust activity” from the company moving forward.
http://akaerospace.com/news/commercial-rocket-launches-coming-kodiak-islandQuoteAd Astra, a Texas-based aerospace company specializing in advanced plasma rocket propulsion technology, is contracted to launch from PSCA in late January or early February, he said. He said Kodiak may see “robust activity” from the company moving forward.
Quote from: Kryten on 10/25/2017 03:17 pmhttp://akaerospace.com/news/commercial-rocket-launches-coming-kodiak-islandQuoteAd Astra, a Texas-based aerospace company specializing in advanced plasma rocket propulsion technology, is contracted to launch from PSCA in late January or early February, he said. He said Kodiak may see “robust activity” from the company moving forward.Have they got the right year on this launch?The VASIMR 100 hour ground test is due in February 2018. The money for launch has to be acquired and construction of the propulsion module needs to occur.
Quote from: A_M_Swallow on 10/25/2017 07:53 pmQuote from: Kryten on 10/25/2017 03:17 pmhttp://akaerospace.com/news/commercial-rocket-launches-coming-kodiak-islandQuoteAd Astra, a Texas-based aerospace company specializing in advanced plasma rocket propulsion technology, is contracted to launch from PSCA in late January or early February, he said. He said Kodiak may see “robust activity” from the company moving forward.Have they got the right year on this launch?The VASIMR 100 hour ground test is due in February 2018. The money for launch has to be acquired and construction of the propulsion module needs to occur.Indeed. That timeline for 2018 only works out if the results have been very consistent and an investor group is happy to go ahead without it running to completion. Which is a good investor to have, if you can find such people. They tend to be quite rare.
So does they mean, Ad Astra will (finally) have V.A.S.I.M.R launched into space? I hope this is true.
Ended a long day by visiting with Franklin Chang-Diaz at Ad Astra Rocket. They're not ready to talk publicly about recent progress, but may have some pretty big news in a few weeks regarding their VASIMR engine.
{snip}QuoteEnded a long day by visiting with Franklin Chang-Diaz at Ad Astra Rocket. They're not ready to talk publicly about recent progress, but may have some pretty big news in a few weeks regarding their VASIMR engine. Thoughts on what the news could be?
Quote from: leovinus on 03/27/2019 02:34 pm{snip}QuoteEnded a long day by visiting with Franklin Chang-Diaz at Ad Astra Rocket. They're not ready to talk publicly about recent progress, but may have some pretty big news in a few weeks regarding their VASIMR engine. Thoughts on what the news could be?Four possibilities come to mind. The first is that Ad Astra has successfully completed the 100 hour burn of the VASIMR. The second is that they have a new contract with NASA for the next stage of testing. The third is someone is buying a VASIMR to install in a spacecraft. The fourth is all of the above.
After decades of arduous study and work, the plasma engine called Vasimr and conceived by the Costa Rican scientist Franklin Chang-Díaz, would be ready to carry out the first tests in space starting in 2023. This was confirmed by the also retired astronaut. “Technology develops in steps. We are now on the fifth step and we almost finished it. The sixth is the one that allows us to test the technology in space. That requires an expansion of the works. Things are not so difficult anymore, but they are expensive”, he explained.
Thanks to these advances, the company began, at the beginning of last January, a new round to attract investment, which would be done in two stages for a total of $ 32 million. However, there is still a final step to complete that “fifth step”.In March 2015, the company announced the signing of a contract with the United States Space Agency (NASA, for its acronym in English). This agreement established a total of 55 milestones, or approved requirements, that the Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Engine (Vasimr) had to meet, before even thinking of surpassing the stratosphere.Less than six years later, that moment could be near. The Costa Rican scientist informed that, at the end of December last year, they managed to complete the penultimate milestone, after the results obtained were validated by NASA.“It is a milestone that we had pursued a long time ago. Be able to fire the engine for continuous times, hours, and verify that none of the critical engine components are overheating. We reached a stable state. “We are now in pursuit of the final milestone, which is a long-duration shot. It is 100 kilowatts, 100 continuous hours. Basically a week, 24 hours a day, shooting continuously ”.
“We could have easily surpassed the 28-hour record but chose to stop our test to give the team a much- needed rest and a chance to celebrate the July 4th holiday”
“We have more work to do to reach the design power of 100 kW, but these last few weeks have demonstrated significant progress“
PRESS RELEASE 072221, JULY 22, 2021: VASIMR® VX-200SS PLASMA ROCKET COMPLETES RECORD 88-HOUR HIGH POWER ENDURANCE TEST. [Webster, Texas – for immediate release] Ad Astra Rocket Company’s VASIMR® VX-200SS Plasma Rocket has completed 88 hours of continuous operation at 80 kW at the company’s Texas laboratory near Houston. In doing so, the company establishes a new high-power world endurance record in electric propulsion. The test also demonstrates the maturity of the VASIMR® engine technology as a competitive option for high-power in-space electric propulsion with either solar or nuclear electric power. Electric rockets operating above 50 kW/thruster are considered “high-power.” The test began at 12:50 pm (CST) last Monday July 12 and ended Friday, July 16 at 4:55 am (CST). The firing stopped only 12 hours shy of its intended duration of 100 hours due to a spurious temperature sensor located in the test support equipment and not on the rocket structure. The rocket, however, was performing normally and all indications were that, were it not for this faulty sensor, it would have met and exceeded the 100hour goal. Ad Astra believes the 88-hr test provides objective and sufficient evidence that the VASIMR® engine has met the intent of the high-power endurance goal set by NASA. “The test is a major success, the culmination of years of trial-and-error testing and painstaking attention to detail and a handsome reward for the team’s tenacity and dedication,” said Franklin R. Chang Díaz, Ad Astra’s chairman and CEO and a decorated former NASA astronaut. “With a new set of engine modifications already in the manufacturing stage, we’ll now move to demonstrate thermal steady state at 100 kW in the second half of 2021,” he added. >>
Latest VASIMR: VX-200SSPerformance is tied to magnetic field intensity. The field is limited today by budget, not by superconductor state of the art. Quote from: Díaz et al. 2022The VX-200SS™ design called for a new high temperature superconducting magnet, operating at a higher peak field, to fully accommodate the new rocket core design. However, the new magnet did not become available due to NASA budgetary limitations; therefore, the VX-200SS™ had to be operated sub-optimally with the superconducting magnet of the VX-200™, at a lower peak field than originally intended.Field intensity trend, Maeda & Yanagisawa 2019.Refs.Díaz, F.R.C., Giambusso, M., Corrigan, A.M., Dean, L.O. and Warrayat, M.F., 2022. Recent Progress on the VASIMR® Engine IEPC-2022-525.Maeda, H. and Yanagisawa, Y., 2019. Future prospects for NMR magnets: A perspective. Journal of Magnetic Resonance, 306, pp.80-85.
The VX-200SS™ design called for a new high temperature superconducting magnet, operating at a higher peak field, to fully accommodate the new rocket core design. However, the new magnet did not become available due to NASA budgetary limitations; therefore, the VX-200SS™ had to be operated sub-optimally with the superconducting magnet of the VX-200™, at a lower peak field than originally intended.
