NASA Offers Reward For Green Propellant

NASA’s Technology Demonstration Missions Program is looking for “green” alternatives to toxic hydrazine as a storable propellant for spacecraft, offering contracts worth as much as $50 million each to researchers with promising ideas.

The agency is seeking proposals for demonstrations of systems that use storable monopropellants or bipropellants that are safer than hydrazine to generate spacecraft propulsion and power. The broad area announcement, which is available at http://go.usa.gov/Qbx, calls for complete integrated systems that include engines, tanks, valves, injectors, igniters, thrust chambers and propellant-control systems.

“High-performance green propulsion has the potential to significantly change how we travel in space,” said Space Technology Program Director Michael Gazarik. “NASA’s Space Technology Program seeks out these sort of cross-cutting, innovative technologies to enable our future missions while also providing benefit to the American space industry. By reducing the hazards of handling fuel, we can reduce ground processing time and lower costs for rocket launches, allowing a greater community of researchers and technologists access to the high frontier.”

Proposals are due April 30, with selection of one or more tentatively set for July. The competition is open to U.S. organizations and to non-U.S. potential participants – with the exception of China – and with some other restrictions in place. NASA has been barred by Congress from funding joint space activities with China.

One possible non-U.S. company to participate is the Swedish Space Corp. subsidiary Ecaps, which has demonstrated performance in steady-state, single-pulse and pulse-mode firings on the Mango satellite – part of the Russian-launched, two-satellite Prisma technology-development mission – that is said to be 8% better on average than the monopropellant hydrazine system on the same spacecraft.

The Swedish system uses a mix of ammonium dinitramide, water, methanol and ammonia, which it has dubbed LMP-103S.

In addition to improved on-orbit performance, the green spacecraft propellant cuts fueling time by eliminating the need for airtight protective suits, according to the Swedish company.

Source: Aviation Week