Applied Physics Seminar: "Big Propulsion for Small Satellites"

The rapid growth of small satellite launches, especially CubeSats, in recent years is a testament to their applicability to a huge variety of academic, government, and industry missions. Although many satellite technologies have been successfully scaled down to CubeSat sizes, propulsion remains a major technology gap due to difficulties in miniaturization. But providing a CubeSat with 10s, 100s, or even 1000s of m/s of delta-v would enable a huge variety of new missions for those satellites. For this reason, a variety of technologies are being pursued by universities, government agencies, and commercial entities. These devices will be surveyed and progress on the University of Michigan technology—the CubeSat Ambipolar Thruster—will be addressed in detail.