USC nanopulse thruster reboot

A spacecraft thruster that fires with electricity instead of combustion is being revived at the University of Southern California, with The Aerospace Corporation and the Naval Postgraduate School now pushing it toward a restartable design. (aerospace.org) The Aerospace Corporation said on April 20 that the project centers on a Nanopulse Plasma Thruster, or NPPT, that can ignite “within milliseconds” and be fired again after shutdown. Aerospace said the work is in the experimental and prototyping phase. (aerospace.org) Electric propulsion works by using electrical power to turn propellant into charged gas, or plasma, and then accelerate that plasma out of the spacecraft to make thrust. USC described the field in 2024 as thrusters that “utilize electromagnetic fields to accelerate plasma (ionized gas) to produce thrust.” (viterbischool.usc.edu) Aerospace said its version uses short, high-voltage pulses to ionize and accelerate an ionic-liquid polymer propellant. The company said that propellant stays stable across a broad temperature range while remaining electrochemically active. (aerospace.org) That setup targets a long-running tradeoff in spacecraft propulsion. Aerospace said traditional rocket motors have often been non-restartable since the 1940s, while many electric thrusters need startup hardware such as heated cathodes before they can run. (aerospace.org; nasa.gov) The immediate use case is maneuvering in crowded low Earth orbit, where operators may need to dodge debris, remove dead hardware, or reposition small satellites on short notice. Aerospace said the NPPT could support collision avoidance, active-debris removal, and retrieval of malfunctioning hardware in low Earth orbit. (aerospace.org) The collaboration also lands as electric propulsion is spreading far beyond niche missions. The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics’ Aerospace America said in January that 2025 saw electric-propulsion systems “proliferate across many metrics,” including high-power systems for NASA’s lunar Gateway and commercial satellite platforms. (aerospaceamerica.aiaa.org) USC has been building out that propulsion bench for several years. In July 2024, USC Viterbi said students in its Advanced Spacecraft Propulsion and Energy group presented a low-power solid-fuel plasma thruster for de-orbiting CubeSats at the 38th International Electric Propulsion Conference in Toulouse, France. (viterbischool.usc.edu) The Aerospace Corporation brings a different role to the partnership. Aerospace describes itself as the nation’s space-focused federally funded research and development center, a position that puts it between government mission needs and early-stage hardware development. (aerospace.org) For now, the thruster is still a prototype, not flight hardware. But the pitch is simple: a spacecraft motor that can wake up in milliseconds, fire in short bursts, and do it again when the orbit changes. (aerospace.org)