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BY: MARY McGUIRE
A penny-sized invention by MIT scientists dubbed a mini-thruster, may be able to propel
tiny satellites into space. Here’s the inventor of the mini-thruster with more.
“If you want to launch something like this, it’s very cheap. But it’s very limited
in what you can do with it. You need an engine to make this run from one place to another.”
The mini-thruster relies on ion beams to produce puffs of charged particles to propel the small
satellites. Gizmodo writes...
“In contrast to traditional rockets, ion thrusters don't provide a whole lot of thrust,
but you don't need much in space.
So what does this mean for those of us who aren’t rocket scientists? The invention
could drastically reduce the amount of space junk in the atmosphere. The design is a flat
compact square, like a computer chip.
Now space junk may seem like a problem light years away, but the inventor tells Wired tons
of bulky satellites whizzing above us is a real problem.
"These satellites could stay in space forever as trash. This trash could collide with other
satellites. You could basically stop the Space Age with just a handful of collisions."
There is no word yet on when the mini-thruster will make it into orbit.