UW scientists anticipate that M2P2 --which stands for Mini-Magnetospheric Plasma Propulsion--will greatly boost aircraft speeds, perhaps to ten times the velocity of the space shuttle. In August, NASA's Institute for Advanced Concepts awarded a two-year, $500,000 grant to a UW team headed by Robert Winglee, associate professor of geophysics, to continue research on M2P2.
If laboratory work and tests in space succeed, an M2P2-equipped spacecraft could be launched in ten years--and eventually overtake Voyager I, launched in 1977 and now about 6.8 billion miles away but still within the solar system.
The system would use a plasma chamber, about the size of a large pickle jar, attached to a spacecraft. Solar cells and solenoid coils would power the creation of a dense magnetized plasma, or ionized gas, that would inflate an electromagnetic field 10 to 12 miles in radius around the spacecraft. The field would interact with and be dragged by the solar wind.
Creating the field would be akin to raising a giant sail and harnessing the solar wind, which moves at 780,000 to 1.8 million miles an hour--or "here to Washington, D.C., in 10 seconds," says Winglee. There is enough power in the solar wind to move a 300-pound spacecraft at speeds of up to 4.3 million miles a day. At such speeds, an M2P2-equipped spacecraft launched today could overtake Voyager I within eight years, despite Voyager's 22-year headstart.
Winglee is currently developing a prototype with geophysics professor George Parks, John Slough, a research associate professor of aeronautics and astronautics, and graduate student Tim Ziemba. They are preparing for tests in the UW's Redmond Plasma Physics Laboratory
If tests on M2P2 succeed, Winglee expects the system's first use in space will come on a mission NASA already will have scheduled. "If it works, we'll have some real fun then," he says.