GSTP funds new UK Facility as part of Innovative Propulsion Offering

Today, the new, GSTP-funded, National Space Propulsion Facility in the UK has been declared open.

GSTP has invested around €4.5 million and overseen the design, assembly and commissioning of the facility – equipped to test-fire the most powerful classes of rocket engines used onboard spacecraft.

This facility is just one of the many activities that GSTP and TDE invest in to ensure that future ESA missions will have the right technology available, at the right maturity, at the right time.

Innovative propulsion is a focus of ESA’s R&D strategy for the coming years, and spans from air-breathing rocket engines, to electric propulsion for extremely low orbits, to green propellants.

From the largest test facilities to the smallest component, GSTP and TDE together have over forty ongoing activities in all areas of propulsion. Whether that is investigating ways of using the latest 3D printing techniques to build lighter and stronger components for the propulsion systems, or developing artificial intelligence programmes that will monitor the amount of fuel left in a propulsion tank.

One of GSTP’s most innovative activities is the SABRE (Synergetic Air-Breathing Rocket Engine) air-breathing propulsion engine, which is designed to offer hypersonic flight and cheaper and more reliable access to space.

GSTP has invested more than €10 million into the SABRE engine, a UK activity, which is uniquely designed to scoop up atmospheric air during the initial part of its ascent to space, at up to five times the speed of sound. At around 25 km altitude, it would then switch to rocket mode for its final climb to orbit. The SABRE engine is intended for future, more sustainable, reusable launch vehicles, which would operate like aircraft. Since it would carry less bulky, heavy oxygen supplies onboard, such a vehicle could deliver the same payload to orbit of at half the mass of current launchers, as well as potentially offering a large reduction in cost and higher launch rate.

At the cutting-edge, GSTP is investing in activities such as INVICTUS, which is currently under approval. INVICTUS plans to take advantage of hypersonic propulsion engines like SABRE, to become a flying test bed for industry and academia to fly and test new components for future missions more easily. ESA is aiming for INVICTUS to be flying within the next four years.

While there is considerable interest in engines, facilities and large projects, propulsion systems cannot run without fuel, which is notoriously heavy, difficult to transport and often explosive or toxic.

Although it is just in the early stages, TDE is working on an activity to understand how to use water as a propellant. Being able to fly a tank full of water, one of the cleanest and safest propellants it is possible to have, and convert it to usable propellant is a holy grail for propulsion systems. Once in space, an electrolyser could be added to the tank, to separate the water into its two components – hydrogen and oxygen. These can then be combusted to produce one of the most efficient propulsion systems available. It is especially useful in places where water is already available, so large heavy tanks do not need to be carried, such as where there is lunar ice.

Although activities like these are at such early stages they won’t see real-world use for many years, (in some cases decades) and represent just a few of the many propulsion activities GSTP and TDE are innovating, these are the beginnings of the technologies which will go on to be used in propulsion systems in future ESA missions.