If you have been following my efforts up until now, you will know that my original Yellow Jacket 6 CFM vacuum pump, which was used as the foreline pump to back my main diffusion pump for vacuum testing, unexpectedly died … Continued
I am very excited to announce that I have been invited by Chandigarh University to give an online webinar on advanced propulsion systems for their undergrad aerospace class next Monday, June 1st! Really looking forward to the talk and engaging … Continued
Last May, I achieved my first ever ignition pulse from an AIS thruster with the AIS-gPPT1. Although it was only a single pulse, it began my journey down this road, showing that high vacuum testing of advanced EP systems and … Continued
Over the past few days I have been busy setting up the Faraday cup build for the upcoming ILIS1 test. Learning lessons from prior thruster testing, I decided to modify the original design to include the thruster mounting on the … Continued
Just a few hours ago I had the incredible opportunity to be a guest speaker with the amazing team at STAR Lab Surat for their live webinar! I had a fantastic time answering a lot of great questions from the … Continued
I am very excited to announce that I will be the guest speaker for the STAR Lab Surat live webinar tomorrow! If you haven’t heard of STAR Lab, it is an inspiring startup in Surat, India dedicated to making space … Continued
Recently I had the fantastic opportunity to be a part of the first guest episode of a new podcast, SPACE ROOTS, dedicated to exploring a new DIY grassroots movement in the space industry. In this episode I talked about DIY … Continued
For the upcoming ignition test of the AIS-ILIS1 ionic liquid ion source electrospray thruster, I need a way to definitively verify ignition, as well as start to gauge performance to estimate thrust and ISP. One of the simplest and most … Continued
A critical part of the preparation for the AIS-ILIS1 ionic liquid ion source electrospray thruster testing is fueling the thruster. There are numerous ways to do it, and after much though, I have decided upon one way that will balance … Continued
I’ve got an exciting and major announcement for the AIS-ILIS1 electrospray thruster development effort! It has been a long time coming, but finally this past Saturday, May 9th, I qualified the ILIS1 drive electronics with the new V4 boards! We … Continued