![\"Aerojet](\"https:\/\/www.satellitetoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/afm315e_handling1_1-300x225.jpg\")
Photo: Aerojet Rocketdyne<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n
Hydrazine, being an extremely dangerous chemical, has been listed by the European Chemicals Agency on its Candidate List of Substances of Very High Concern for Authorization. In 2008 the U.S. Navy destroyed an irreparable U.S. spy satellite (U.S 193) based on concerns that its hydrazine fuel storage would survive atmospheric reentry. Concern over the safety of hydrazine has been longstanding, but the reason AF-M315E has taken so long to produce is primarily due to difficulty making use of its operational temperature and catalyst agent.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe reason it took 15 years to get this fuel accepted was it\u2019s a very high temperature fuel,\u201d explained McLean. \u201cThe high temperature is in a sense, an indicator of the performance, because of the amount of energy coming out of it. The AF-M315E is a catalytically decomposing fluid that goes into a catalytic engine, and the temperatures are quite in excess of anything we\u2019ve done before with this type of catalytic reaction. About two years ago Aerojet Rocketdyne in Redmond Washington had a breakthrough with the catalyst technology that allowed the catalyst to survive the temperatures of this propellant. Until they had gone through with that breakthrough, the most time we had seen out of these engines was on the order of seconds before all of the catalyst would wash out. Now we\u2019re looking at comparable life if not better to that of hydrazine technology.\u201d<\/p>\n
The new \u201cgreen\u201d fuel is powerful enough to operate in place of hydrazine at a much safer level.<\/p>\n
\u201c[It has] very low toxicity,\u201d said Mclean. \u201cThe lethal dose 50 (LD50 metric) is what we use. If you have a scale from one to 10, 10 would be hydrazine, gasoline is around four to five and AF-M315E is around 1.5. It ranks up there with caffeine and drinking too much water.\u201d<\/p>\n
Besides the safety and environmental benefits, AF-M315E provides cost-savings benefits as well. \u201cStudies from the Air Force and NASA Goddard indicate there are cost savings to be had of around half a million dollars per launch, with the training and the suits and all the provisions that go around handling the other types of fuel compared to this,\u201d McLean added.<\/p>\n
The GPIM will test out two different types of thrusters, both of which see extensive commercial use. Four 1-newton thrusters will test the satellite attitude control, while a single 22-newton thruster will serve as the primary divert engine for large maneuvers. \u201cWe want to demonstrate this technology and make it ready for the marketplace so the next user can say \u2018hey this does have flight heritage, I can consider this,\u2019\u201d said McLean. \u201cOne of the big hurdles is if something hasn\u2019t flown people are reluctant to take the risk of flying and demonstrating a new technology. So the goal of this GPIM infusion mission is to go through those things.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n The mission makes use of the Ball Configurable Platform (BCP) 100 spacecraft bus to implement AF-M315E. Satellites that make use of the green fuel will have to be designed specifically to do so, which may take some time, but McLean believes it will prove to be a cost-effective decision. \u201cWhen your look at a mature bus that has a hydrazine system, the odds are the rebuild of the next system wouldn\u2019t employ this, but some of our studies show that when you employ AF-M315E, you can step down a launch vehicle for some LEO type missions,\u201d said McLean. \u201cThere\u2019s $20-30 million off your launch price tag right there.\u201d<\/p>\n Still, primary interest is expected to start with public sector uses until the fuel has enough flight heritage to imbue confidence. \u201cWhere it comes in first probably NASA then DoD and then probably commercial,\u201d said McLean. \u201cRight now it\u2019s really proprietary and competitive, but there are a handful of requests coming in right now for quotes once the system is available, not only with U.S. NASA, commercial and defense customers requesting when they can get this technology, but also the Europeans are requesting to take a look at our technology as well.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [Via Satellite 12-23-13] After decades of uncontested use, hydrazine is being challenged by a new upcoming fuel in the spacecraft propulsion market. Together with Aerojet Rocketdyne, NASA and the U.S. Air Force, Ball Aerospace\u2019s Green Propellant Infusion Mission (GPIM) is using 15 years of work to create a competitive satellite propellant called Hydroxyl Ammonium Nitrate […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":79016,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-79015","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79015"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79015"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79015\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/79016"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79015"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79015"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79015"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"GPIM](\"https:\/\/www.satellitetoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/DSC00879-300x225.jpg\")