SAN FRANCISCO – Benchmark Space Systems won a $2.81 million U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory contract to proceed development and testing of thrusters running on Advanced Spacecraft Energetic Non-Toxic, ASCENT, fuel.
The 2-year award announced Aug. 29 was Benchmark’s second AFRL SPRINT award. AFRL issued a Broad Agency Announcement in 2019 called Space Propulsion Research and Innovation for Neutralizing Satellite Threats, often called SPRINT, searching for proposals of interest to AFRL’s Space Propulsion Research Branch.
Under the brand new AFRL-funded program, Benchmark is constructing a 22 Newton thruster for ASCENT hot-fire demonstrations. As well as, Burlington, Vermont-based Benchmark will deliver a preliminary design of a 100 Newton thruster assembly in 2025.
Optimizing for Size, Weight and Longevity
With funding from its first SPRINT award, Benchmark developed and demonstrated a prototype thruster that burns ASCENT fuel with no catalyst. The prototype thruster was a proof of concept and was not optimized for spaceflight.
“On this phase, we’re designing a thruster you can apply to an operational mission,” Jake Teufert, Benchmark chief technology officer, told . “Now, weight matters and longevity matters.”
ASCENT Through the Years
ASCENT was first launched in 2019 on NASA’s Green Propellant Infusion Mission. NASA’s Lunar Flashlight, a cubesat launched in 2022 to watch water ice deposits on the moon, was also powered by ASCENT.
“Years of labor have been put into operationalizing ASCENT, a high-performance, storable monopropellant that has the chance to extend mission capability beyond what’s offered by hydrazine,” Teufert said. “With this contract, we’re taking ASCENT from lower-thrust demonstrators and scaling that as much as where it’s addressable for each mission that the DoD currently performs” with hydrazine.
Advanced Propellants Group
Benchmark is also establishing an Advanced Propellants Group led by Michael Martin, a mechanical engineer with a PhD from Texas A&M University, to check quite a lot of nontoxic chemical, electric and hybrid propulsion systems.
The brand new organization will “take a look at all these recent monopropellants which can be coming out and other bipropellants and develop each thrusters that may utilize them but additionally ways to change existing propellants,” Martin said. “For example, this thruster that we’re developing for AFRL has a possible for use with other monopropellants which can be currently available in Europe and Japan. You can find yourself having families of thrusters using different monopropellants.”
U.S. International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) prevent the export of ASCENT. The power to make use of different propellants could pave the strategy to foreign sales of latest Benchmark thrusters.
Benchmark employs “non-toxic propulsion professionals who will open the door even wider for ASCENT usage, as we also explore bringing in other underutilized and promising green chemical, electric and hybrid technologies to power the space economy,” Martin said in a press release.
Tactical Responsiveness
Martin, who has worked with ASCENT for greater than three years, said, “what I actually liked about it’s that I can wear a lab coat and gloves to work with this propellant. It’s also easy to store and transport.”
In contrast working with hydrazine requires Self Contained Atmospheric Protection Ensemble or SCAPE suits.
Teufert added that ASCENT might be “particularly powerful and necessary” for responsive space applications, where satellites could also be stored on the bottom or in an orbital warehouse.
ASCENT “is a propellant you possibly can load into the satellite that’s sitting on a shelf able to be integrated at a moment’s notice,” Teufert said. “You’ll be able to’t do this with a hydrazine system.”