Slashdot: Plasma Thrusters For Small Satellite Systems Hit Hyper Drive

Plasma Thrusters For Small Satellite Systems Hit Hyper Drive
Published on August 31, 2019 at 12:30PM
Greg Nichols reporting for ZDNet: A company that makes propulsion systems for small satellites, Orbion Space Technology, has announced $9.2M in Series A funding. The round was led by Material Impact, a venture firm focused on translating early stage materials technologies into products and companies. Orbion has developed a very Star Trek-sounding technology that may prove to be a crucial component of an emerging New Space industry, the first-ever Hall-effect plasma thrusters for small satellites, dubbed the Aurora system. The company plans to use the capital from this round to support mass production of its thrusters. Hall-effect plasma thrusters are a type of ion drive in which a propellant is accelerated by an electric field. The technology has been around since the 1960s, and Hall-effect thrusters were in use on Soviet satellites between 1972 and 1990. What's new is the size of the thrusters, as well as the size of the satellites they power, which are variously dubbed smallsats, microsatellites, or nanosatellites. As components and sensing technology has gotten smaller, and with the diversity of computing and sensing components available off-the-shelf, this new breed of satellite is cheap to build and lightweight, further reducing payload costs. That's opening up the possibility of launching communications and satellite arrays to companies and organizations that have never had that option.

Comments

Slashdot: US Plans $825 Million Investment For New York Semiconductor R&D Facility

US Plans $825 Million Investment For New York Semiconductor R&D Facility Published on November 02, 2024 at 03:00AM The Biden administration is investing $825 million in a new semiconductor research and development facility in Albany, New York. Reuters reports: The New York facility will be expected to drive innovation in EUV technology, a complex process necessary to make semiconductors, the U.S. Department of Commerce and Natcast, operator of the National Semiconductor Technology Center (NTSC) said. The launch of the facility "represents a key milestone in ensuring the United States remains a global leader in innovation and semiconductor research and development," Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said. From the U.S. Department of Commerce press release: EUV Lithography is essential for manufacturing smaller, faster, and more efficient microchips. As the semiconductor industry pushes the limits of Moore's Law, EUV lithography has emerged as a critical technology to ...

Slashdot: AT&T, T-Mobile Prep First RedCap 5G IoT Devices

AT&T, T-Mobile Prep First RedCap 5G IoT Devices Published on October 15, 2024 at 03:20AM The first 5G Internet of Things (IoT) devices are launching soon. According to Fierce Wireless, T-Mobile plans to launch its first RedCap devices by the end of the year, while AT&T's devices are expected sometime in 2025. From the report: All of this should pave the way for higher performance 5G gadgets to make an impact in the world of IoT. RedCap, which stands for reduced capabilities, was introduced as part of the 3GPP's Release 17 5G standard, which was completed -- or frozen in 3GPP terms -- in mid-2022. The specification, which is also called NR-Light, is the first 5G-specific spec for IoT. RedCap promises to offer data transfer speeds of between 30 Mbps to 80 Mbps. The RedCap spec greatly reduces the bandwidth needed for 5G, allowing the signal to run in a 20 MHz channel rather than the 100 MHz channel required for full scale 5G communications. Read more of this story at...

Slashdot: Texas A&M University Tops Nation in Engineering Research Expenditures

Texas A&M University Tops Nation in Engineering Research Expenditures Published on June 19, 2024 at 12:50AM An anonymous reader shares a report: Texas A&M University held the largest engineering research portfolio of any academic institution in the country last year, nearing half a billion dollars and surpassing Massachusetts Institute of Technology for the top spot, according to U.S. News & World Report. The state flagship's College of Engineering recorded $444.7 million in research expenditures in the 2023 fiscal year, university officials said. A mix of federal, state and private grants funds those efforts, so more expenditures means more partnerships and a larger engineering footprint than ever, Texas A&M University System Chancellor John Sharp said. "An awful lot of people in Washington, a lot of people in Austin, a lot of people in the private sector now rely on Texas A&M to do their engineering research," Sharp said. "Of all the places in...

Shameless Plug

Search This Blog