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thewayneHydrazine is very, VERY nasty stuff! You have to wear a pressurized environment suit when using it to fuel things, it's very toxic.
The new stuff, AFM-315, is less toxic than caffeine. And it's 50% more energetic than hydrazine, which means satellites can have a longer life, assuming they're in a higher orbit, which -315 can help them achieve! It was described as so safe that people sat around in standard lab gear with -315 in plastic jugs as they used it to fuel a satellite. It's a liquid salt and doesn't freeze at extremely low temperatures, from the article it "undergoes a glass transition instead. This transforms the fuel into a brittle, glass-like solid, but it doesn’t cause the fuel to expand like frozen water or hydrazine. This attribute prevents fuel lines and storage containers from cracking under stress. Moreover, its glass transition point is extremely low, so the fuel wouldn’t need to be heated on the satellite—a big power suck for other missions. McLean says this will make more power available for other instruments or systems on the satellite, which could open up new possibilities in missions to other planets."
Very cool stuff. It was actually invented 20 years ago, but people have been slow to adopt it as they wanted to see how it worked out.
Also from the Wired article, "On June 24 it is scheduled to fly on the second operational mission of the Falcon Heavy along with several other payloads, including an atomic clock being tested for deep space navigation.
The green propellant satellite bus was developed by Ball Aerospace and is outfitted with four 1-newton thrusters and one 22-newton thruster that will be used to test the AFM-315 propellant. During its 13-month mission it will use the thrusters to perform orbital maneuvers, such as lowering its orbit and changing its attitude or tilt, to test the performance of the propellant."
https://www.wired.com/story/a-new-fuel-for-satellites-is-so-safe-it-wont-blow-up-humans/
The new stuff, AFM-315, is less toxic than caffeine. And it's 50% more energetic than hydrazine, which means satellites can have a longer life, assuming they're in a higher orbit, which -315 can help them achieve! It was described as so safe that people sat around in standard lab gear with -315 in plastic jugs as they used it to fuel a satellite. It's a liquid salt and doesn't freeze at extremely low temperatures, from the article it "undergoes a glass transition instead. This transforms the fuel into a brittle, glass-like solid, but it doesn’t cause the fuel to expand like frozen water or hydrazine. This attribute prevents fuel lines and storage containers from cracking under stress. Moreover, its glass transition point is extremely low, so the fuel wouldn’t need to be heated on the satellite—a big power suck for other missions. McLean says this will make more power available for other instruments or systems on the satellite, which could open up new possibilities in missions to other planets."
Very cool stuff. It was actually invented 20 years ago, but people have been slow to adopt it as they wanted to see how it worked out.
Also from the Wired article, "On June 24 it is scheduled to fly on the second operational mission of the Falcon Heavy along with several other payloads, including an atomic clock being tested for deep space navigation.
The green propellant satellite bus was developed by Ball Aerospace and is outfitted with four 1-newton thrusters and one 22-newton thruster that will be used to test the AFM-315 propellant. During its 13-month mission it will use the thrusters to perform orbital maneuvers, such as lowering its orbit and changing its attitude or tilt, to test the performance of the propellant."
https://www.wired.com/story/a-new-fuel-for-satellites-is-so-safe-it-wont-blow-up-humans/
