Engineering Commons^™

Design And Development Of A Delivery System For Green Ionic Monopropellants And Testing Of A 22n Thruster, Jaclyn Mona Mejia

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

LMP-103S and AFM-315E are emerging propellants that are less toxic to the environment than the propellants currently being used in spacecraft propulsion. Both propellants are a blend of liquid fuel, oxidizer and a majority percent of water. The diluted solutions enable the capability to handle and store the propellants with fewer requirements; for this reason, it decreases the overall cost of the propellants since it needs less precautions. The Missile Defense Agency (MDA) awarded the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) a contract to further research green propellants and eventually replace Hydrazide.

Design Of A 2000 Lbf Lox/Lch4 Throttleable Rocket Engine For A Vertical Lander, Israel Lopez

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Liquid oxygen (LOX) and liquid methane (LCH4) has been recognized as an attractive rocket propellant combination because of its in-situ resource utilization (ISRU) capabilities, namely in Mars. ISRU would allow launch vehicles to carry greater payloads and promote missions to Mars. This has led to an increasing interest to develop spacecraft technologies that employ this propellant combination.

The UTEP Center for Space Exploration and Technology Research (cSETR) has focused part of its research efforts to developing LOX/LCH4 systems. One of those projects includes the development of a vertical takeoff and landing vehicle called JANUS. This vehicle will employ a LOX/LCH4 …