Researchers developed a method that could lead to a rocket that is powered by light instead of fuel.
The current maximum spacecraft speed is limited by the amount of fuel it can carry, this method could bring researchers one step closer to overcoming this obstacle, the Optical Society reported.
Achieving higher speeds means more fuel must be burned, which would impose a larger burden on the spacecraft. These loads could be dramatically reduced if a laser was used to provide additional propulsive force.
A number of systems have been proposed to achieve this, but a promising one is a process called laser ablation. In this technique a laser beam strikes a surface to heat it up before burning off material to create a "plasma plume," which is charged particles that flow off the surface. The outflow of this plasma plume provides additional thrust to propel the craft.
"To produce supersonic laser propulsion, a new technique based on the interaction of a laser-ablated jet with supersonic gas flow in a nozzle is proposed," the researchers stated in their study abstract.
The researchers demonstrated that laser ablation gets around challenges seen in other laser-propulsion methods, such as the instability of supersonic gases as they flow through a nozzle. The plasma plume is redirected so it will flow extremely close to the walls of the nozzle, and will not reduce as much thrust.
"Summarizing the data obtained, we can forecast the application of the supersonic laser propulsion techniques not only for launching small satellites to Earth orbits but also for additional acceleration of supersonic aircrafts to achieve Mach 10 and more," said physicist Yuri Rezunkov of the Institute of Optoelectronic Instrument Engineering, Russia.
The findings were published Oct. 30 in the journal Applied Optics.
