Space News is becoming
hotter: NASA is going to use antimatter in space ships of the future.
Fusion reactions begin by
antimatter particle beams may start to drive the ultra-high spacecraft sent on
a long journey, by the middle of this century, the researchers said.
Ships from the fusion
engine can reach Jupiter in 4 months, thus opening the way to the outer solar
system, the human expeditions, according to a report by NASA in 2010
In order to make this
technology available, scientists will have to overcome many obstacles - in
particular those related to the receipt and storage of antimatter - but some
experts believe that it may be ready by mid-century.
Power Fusion impresses
The fuel for such a
ship with thermonuclear engines will probably consist of small pellets
containing deuterium and tritium - heavy hydrogen isotopes, which contain one
or two neutrons in its nucleus, respectively. (At the core of the ordinary
hydrogen atom no neutron.)
Within each grain is
the fuel will be surrounded by another substance, possibly uranium. Feed
antiproton - proton antimatter equivalents having an electric charge of -1, and
not one - will be sent to the pellets.
When antiprotons come
into contact with uranium nuclei, they will annihilate, creating products of
high decay which launches nuclear fusion reactions in the fuel.
Such reactions - eg
nuclear fusion of deuterium and tritium, which leads to the formation of a
single atom of helium-4 and a neutron - releasing enormous amounts of energy
that can be used to make the ship move in several different directions.
"The energy
released in the course of these reactions can be used for heating fuel or a
pulse with a magnetic plasma confinement and magnetic nozzle," - said in a
report in 2010 entitled "The Limits of modern technology: a revolutionary
breakthrough in space exploration" which NASA released with the support of
The Tauri Group and a number of experts.
The basic idea is this:
in the course of the "Daedalus", a study conducted by the British
Interplanetary Society in 1970. Were invited to use thermonuclear rocket engine
for interstellar spacecraft? But then it was assumed that nuclear fusion,
considered in the "Daedalus", must be initiated by electron beams
rather than antiprotons.
Yet something still
prevents us
Although fusion is
running with antiproton beams, is a very tempting technology, yet scientists
still have a lot of work to put those ideas into practice.
Perhaps the most
difficult will be getting antiprotons - which can be created in particle
accelerators - in sufficient quantities and storing them for a long time
required to perform a long journey.
According to the report
"The Limits of modern technology," the flight to Jupiter would need
about 1.16 g of antiprotons. This, of course, is not a very scary figure, but
must take into account that in the present production capacity can receive a
billionth of a gram of the substance.
Still, the volume of
produced antiprotons are escalating, so we can hope that the next major
scientific breakthrough associated with space propulsion, will happen even
before the 2060
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