Articles by lbsella

On July 8, 2011, the Atlantis space shuttle took off for its last flight, as the last space launch on American soil, and on July 21, the space age hit a crossroads. Ever since, America has been launching astronauts to the I.S.S. (International Space Station) with the help of Russia, using their rockets. Then in 2017, SpaceX was elected to build a spacecraft to carry astronauts to the I.S.S. , so what the catch? This shuttle will be launched off of American soil from the Kennedy Space Center for the first time in eight years. Tests had happened, an unmanned test flight had succeeded and the crew dragon capsule had safely landed in the Atlantic Ocean. And on March 3, the mission, manned by  Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley, successfully docked with the I.S.S. . On March 8, they undocked and completed their splash down. This was a big feat…

There’s one thing that the human race is sure of; the space age is upon us. Surprisingly, the best way of doing it right about now is putting humans on top of a rocket that could explode at any moment and launching them into space. I know, it sounds reckless. And surprisingly, it works. But here’s the problem: chemical rockets can get humans into earth’s orbit and out, but if we are going to explore the stars, chemical rockets just won’t do it. These rockets are powered by liquid hydrogen (LH2) having liquid oxygen (LOX) as the oxidizer which creates thrust. Unfortunately the thrust is very powerful, doesn’t last long. However, at P.E.P.L. (Plasmadynamics & Electric Propulsion Laboratory), scientists have a solution. The X3 ion thruster is a type of electric propulsion design called a hall thruster, which has ten times the efficiency of a chemical rocket. To create thrust,…