12-03, 13:30–14:20 (Europe/Luxembourg), Banquet Room
Human exploration to the stars will require a breakthrough in propulsion. We therefore decided to establish a dedicated breakthrough propulsion group within our institute to investigate and test new ideas for propellantless propulsion. Our main focus is developing a cutting-edge suite of measurement devices including thrust balances with (sub) nano-Newton resolution and a superconducting levitation thrust stand as well as a nano-gram weight balance. In addition to superior resolution, our balances are well characterized and built to be as little sensitive as possible to the environment like electromagnetic or thermal interactions. They feature the possibility to have high voltage or even cryogenic temperature environments on the balance if necessary. Several tests were carried out to test claims of revolutionary propulsion devices such as the EMDrive that could be traced back to setup-related artefacts. Here we review our program goals and developments and show some examples of what we tested so far as well as what we want to do in the future.
Prof. Dr. Martin Tajmar studied physics, space studies as well as electrical engineering and graduated with a PhD in 1999 from the Vienna University of Technology in Austria. After research stays at NASA JPL and ESA-ESTEC, he joined the Austrian Institute of Technology from 2000-2010 where he was head of the business unit space propulsion & advanced concepts. After being appointed as associate professor at KAIST, he moved to TU Dresden in Germany as full professor and head of the chair of space systems in 2012, where he was later appointed as the director of the institute of aerospace engineering. Besides the developments of his group, which includes small satellites and activities on liquid-fueled rocket engines using aerospike nozzles, his main research focus is on the development of novel electric propulsion systems and really advanced concepts for future space flight.