In an epoch where space propulsion technology has reached a plateau of incremental improvements, a milestone demonstration emerges with RocketStar Inc.’s successful testing of the FireStar™ Nuclear Fusion-Enhanced Pulsed Plasma Propulsion Drive. This potential breakthrough device upgrades the company’s basic water fuel pulsed plasma thruster by injecting particles into the exhaust plume of the driver, thus generating fusion reactions and significantly increasing the power output of the basic driver.
RocketStar’s Foundation drive is a type of electric propulsion technology that uses regular old water as its main propellant. According to the company, the drive has been tested in space as part of NASA’s Artemis mission. “Our FireStar™ Foundation Drive was developed and launched for Artemis 1 in November 2022,” they told The Debrief. “The initial model was delivered to NASA for integration in 2019, and further commercial sales have since ceased.”
“FireStar™ Foundation Drive will be integrated into a D-Orbit hosted payload for launch on SpaceX Transporter 11 & 12 in July and October this year,” company executives told The Debrief.
D-orbit echoed that enthusiasm, with Matteo Lorenzoni, Head of Sales at D-Orbit, noting that “we just integrated the thruster onto the ION Satellite Carrier, and look forward to witnessing its performance in orbit.”
Afterwards, Craddock and Fayler informed The Debrief that the FireStar™ Fusion Drive is set to launch with Rogue Space Systems in February 2025. The main objective is to gather in-space data regarding fuel efficiency and economy, as well as various performance metrics, both with and without fusion.
“We are very excited to test FireStar for RocketStar,” said Brent Abbott, CRO at Rogue Space Systems, in the same statement, confirming the February 2025 launch aboard the company’s Barry-2 spacecraft. “We look forward to considering it for future Rogue missions.”
“We create protons as a by-product of our Foundation thruster that are moving fast enough to induce nuclear fusion with Boron,” the company told The Debrief. “That type of fusion creates a high-energy carbon that immediately decays into three useful alpha particles, thereby breaking up the cloud of positive charge that exists in the exhaust of all-electric thrusters.”
This implies that the fusion reaction does not boost thrust by expelling fusion radiation out of the thruster. Rather, the alpha particles produced enhance the thruster by mitigating the “space charge effect,” thus enhancing the efficiency of the Foundation drive.
“It’s all indirect, using a very specific type of fusion to sweep away garbage,” RocketStar executives told The Debrief.
Those improved propulsion results were later confirmed in Phase 2 of the system’s development at Georgia Tech’s High Power Electric Propulsion Laboratory (HPEPL) in Atlanta, Georgia. There, the drive not only created the telltale ionizing radiation of the fusion reaction but also improved the base unit’s thrust by 50%.
Relevant articles:
– RocketStar Successfully Demonstrates FireStar™ Nuclear Fusion-Enhanced Pulsed Plasma Propulsion Drive
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