Thanks for posting, I hadn't heard of this effort.Cliff notes: they are still doing fairly basic research at TRL 4. It works by triggering pulsed arcs of electricity into the cathode (the 'fuel'), which ejects small amounts of material from the cathode at high velocity as plasma, which is the reaction mass. Not fully clear how they direct the plasma to maximize impulse.They appear to be getting medium to very high Isp in the lab, but have much higher electrical power requirements than Hall or gridded and also need sizable capacitor banks to drive the arcs.They are billing the cheap / robust / easy to ISRU fuel as the main selling point; e.g send up a space furnace to melt down some human space junk. This doesn't seem super compelling to me as a near term benefit.They have numerous issues to work through to bring it to reality but it is potentially very interesting.overview: http://www.neumannspace.com/p/science.html
Neumann Space moved to Lot Fourteen to join the rich ecosystem of key industry players made of Primes, SMEs and start-ups alongside Inovor Technologies and Myriota for example but also the SmartSatCRC and the Australian Space Agency set to move in later this year. Neumann Space looks forward to capitalising on the collaborative opportunities that such close proximity to a variety of valuable space stakeholders brings.Neumann Space also raised $2,000,000 in seed funding this year with $850,000 sourced through the South Australian Department for Innovation and Skills’ Research, Commercialisation and Startup Fund available under the new model for entrepreneurship in South Australia called FIXE – the Future Industries Exchange for Entrepreneurship. The matched investment has been provided by Earth Space Robotics.Finally Neumann Space signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Inovor Technologies to work together on an experimental mission that will demonstrate our respective capabilities allowing us to offer a turnkey cubesat solutions (inclusive of a propulsion system) for our customers.
Micro carthode arc thruster, this type of thruster have been studied in lab for years, and on Phonesat Cubesat in 2013. It enables small cubesats to have large orbit manuver capabilities, and eventually launching a large constellation in one rocket.Congratulations it have been put into commercial development.
