New Delhi:
A new NASA study has suggested that a puzzling and controversial engine design which could make space travel much cheaper and faster may actually work.
The engine named EmDrive is an experimental propulsion system, which appears to violate the laws of physics, in a lab test generated small amounts of thrust, according to researchers.
The fuel-free engine was supposedly impossible to create, leak NASA paper has suggested. A NASA paper was first leaked online on November 5. It surfaces on a NASA spaceflight enthusiast forum by an Australian EmDrive fan named Phil Wilson. He has the username ‘The Traveller’.
However, it was soon removed by Spaceflight’s moderators as it was not officially released. It is scheduled to be published by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) in December this year.
The technology offers the possibility of a fuel-less propulsion system that is said to have an ability to reach Mars in just 70 days. Current rocket engines take 300 days to land on Mars.
British researcher Roger Shawyer developed the EmDrive more than 10 years ago. The EmDrive bounces microwaves around inside a cone-shaped chamber then generates thrust.
Newton’s third law of motion states that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. However, this should not work according to the law because EmDrive system does not expel out any exhaust.
Harold White from NASA’s Johnson Space Centre in Houston led a team of researchers who did measure some thrust. The EmDrive variant churned out about .2 millinewtons of force per kilowatt of energy, ‘Space.com’ reported.
This thrust is about 100 times more than solar-sailing spacecraft, which harness the momentum of photons streaming from the Sun, are able to achieve, researchers said.
Just like the solar sails, the EmDrive doesn’t require a propellant. It is believed that the EmDrive could make space travel much cheaper and faster, theoretically opening up the heavens to greater exploration.
However, the study is just a proof of concept and further testing is needed to definitively rule out all possible sources of experimental error, White said.
