SBIR/STTR Research Award
Magnetically Enhanced Vacuum Arc Thruster
Award amount
$599,500Program and phase
SBIR · Phase IIAward year
2004Award details
- Awarding agency
- National Aeronautics and Space Administration
- Branch
- Not reported
- Recipient company
- ALAMEDA APPLIED SCIENCES CORPORATION
- Proposal award date
- 2003-12-01
- Contract end date
- 2005-12-01
- UEI
- KFQ5MZYFRJ99
- Solicitation number
- Not reported
- Topic code
- S3.02
Research abstract
Alameda Applied Sciences Corporation has demonstrated the feasibility of a new type of electric propulsion device dubbed the Magnetically Enhanced Vacuum Arc Thruster (MVAT). This thruster is itself a variant on the Vacuum Arc Thruster that has been demonstrated via a recently concluded Phase I SBIR contracts from NASA. The VAT was verified to be a throttleable low mass (ca. 150g) high efficiency (ca. 10% measured), high Isp (1000-3000s) electric propulsion device that can be remotely adjusted to deliver individual impulse bits from 0.25?Ns to 50?Ns with repetition rates varying from 1?1000 Hz while all the time providing an Isp of >1000s. The MVAT approach has shown to improve thruster performance and control contamination while keeping the system mass low (<300g). AASC proposes to team with Aerojet to further develop and low level qualify the MVAT to TRL 5.
Technology keywords
Not reported
Other awards by this recipient
Verified by the same UEI. These are other public SBIR/STTR award pages, not a merged company record.
- High-Impulse, Scalable, Metal Plasma Thruster for Cubesat Missions
- High-Impulse, Scalable, Metal Plasma Thruster for Cubesat Missions
- High-Impulse, Scalable, Metal Plasma Thruster for Cubesat Missions
- (Seamless, Niobium Coated Copper Cavities for SRF accelerators) LOC's -Biased deposition of Nb-on-Electro-Hydro-Formed-Cu cavities for SRF accelerators
- Biased deposition of Nb-on-Cu for SRF accelerators
Awards with the same topic code
Verified by an exact topic code match. This is not a text-similarity match.
- Monofilament Vaporization Propulsion (MVP) System
- Green Monopropellant Propulsion for Small Spacecrafts
- Cathode for Electric Space Propulsion Utilizing Iodine as Propellant
- Adaptive Venturi for Monopropellant Feed Systems
- I-Sail: 2500-Square-Meter Solar Sail Prototype Demonstrator
Research funding history
102 SBIR/STTR records share this UEI (1996–2021). Reported award amounts total $29,019,816. Reported amounts are not federal obligations.
Phases: Phase I, Phase II
Agencies: Department of Defense, Department of Energy, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, National Science Foundation, Department of Homeland Security, Department of Health and Human Services