PROMISE: Production of Resources on Mars In Situ for Exploration.
Originally proposed as a plant to produce the elements of breathable air and rocket fuel from carbon dioxide, PROMISE may now add components to actually test a rocket thruster.
NASA selected the PROMISE proposal, but asked that it add a system to test cryogenic gas storage and a demonstration thrust engine, said Joy Crisp, deputy project scientist for the 2003 and 2005 Mars missions.
The HEDS program wants to see an end-to-end demonstration that oxygen and methane can be produced, stored, then used as propellant in a real engine, she said.
This request will mean that the engineering team from the University of Arizona that is building PROMISE will have to incorporate pieces of a proposal offered by engineers at NASA's Johnson Space Center.
The NASA team has developed a novel method to cool and store methane and oxygen, then use it to fuel a small rocket engine, said Matthias Gottmann, who is functioning as the project manager on the PROMISE package. Gottmann is working under the direction of K.R. Sridhar, a researcher in the aerospace and mechanical engineering department at the University of Arizona, who is the principal investigator for the experiment.
"Basically, we're going to fly a little production plant that will simultaneously produce oxygen; the buffer gasses argon and nitrogen for breathing; and methane and oxygen for use as a propellant," Gottmann said.
Argon and nitrogen would be used to dilute oxygen for breathing, making a little go a longer way.
The PROMISE team is now working to integrate a cold storage system designed to cool and liquefy the pure oxygen and methane that the generator produces. That liquid fuel can then be routed to a small thruster powered by these liquefied gasses. Fixed to a stable part of the spacecraft, the thruster would be fired up to demonstrate that the propellant production system works.
The miniature engine is designed to provide ten pounds of thrust, Gottmann said. "It's quite an efficient little beast."
The vital components from the two teams must all fit into an awkward area that resembles "two pyramids pushed into each other and little blobs hanging off the pyramid," Gottmann said. Although the challenges of incorporating the several components into a complete system during the next five weeks are enormous, Gottmann expressed confidence in the project.
"I think it can be done. It's going to be very hard in terms of volume and mass and power, but then again it's so attractive that people are probably willing to do compromises, and I think we can come up with clever solutions to accommodate all of that," he said.
advertisement
