Engineers at the University of Hertfordshire are working on a dual-fuel rocket that could provide technology suitable for a rocket for Mars and will have a negative carbon footprint.
Eur Ing Wilkinson and MSc student Sathyakumar Sharma, from the University of Salford, are using their experience of hybrid fuels and Sharma’s part-time experience at the Indian Space-Research Organisation to develop a rocket which will be fuelled by a mixture of carbon-dioxide (CO) and aluminium.
The rocket will take CO and turn it into carbon, which is the opposite of what most existing rockets do.
The researchers plan to complete the technology demonstrator by September this year, when they should have a rocket motor which uses fine aluminium powder and therefore ignites easily. And the decision to mix this with CO means that if it did provide the basis for a rocket suitable for a mission to Mars, it could refuel from the atmosphere on the planet.
“The idea is that a Mars rocket (not this one) could save a lot of cost and mass by not taking with it the propellants it needs for its return flight,” says Wilkinson.
“One method of doing this is to use an easily available Martian resource, carbon-dioxide, as a propellant, and burn it with aluminium or magnesium powder.
“However, this is new technology, so research needs to be done to prove it will work and to develop it fully.
“A test has been done in the laboratory already at Purdue University, in the US, but we aim to be the first in the world to build a flight-capable motor and to demonstrate the feasibility with a low-altitude flight (maybe a mile high) of a small rocket.”
Last year, Eur Ing Wilkinson and a student team also developed a rocket that was powered by toffee and a sled. It has reached over 1,200mph in about one-third of a second.
Rocketry started at the University of Hertfordshire in October 2005. From a fresh start, the group has progressed quickly from model rockets into high-power rocketry. It has built a number of rockets and has several in build currently.
A video of the researchers’ latest rocket concept is available on You Tube at
http://www.youtube
.com/watch?v=ICPcm9jvoks