Viaspace Inc. has announced that its subsidiary, Ionfinity LLC, has been awarded a Phase II STTR contract extension and additional funding by the U. S. Air Force to develop, with Aerospace Corp. and the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a soft-ionization membrane to be used as a micro-ion engine for micro and nano-satellite station keeping. Massively duplicated micro-ion engines could also provide station keeping for large satellites.

The soft ionization membrane produces ion beams. The technology is also being applied to the mass spectrometry market where it is expected to provide a large increase in sensitivity with a significant reduction in size and cost. In addition to the current $2 billion a year market for mass spectrometry instruments, the soft ionization membrane is expected to enable a new generation of sensors for detecting chemical and biological warfare agents, narcotics and explosives. Ionfinity is pursuing these applications under separate contracts from the U.S. Army and Navy.

The advent of the microspacecraft concept, representing a class of spacecraft of a few kilogram or less has created a need for new, miniaturized propulsion components. Among these, thruster components will be required to deliver very small thrust values (milli-Newtons and below) and low-impulse bits (micro-Newtonseconds), and may feature engine sizes and masses orders of magnitude smaller than are available with current thruster hardware. Primary propulsion applications may also require the use of high-specific-impulse thrusters in order to keep propellant mass and total spacecraft weight low.

Dedicated to transforming proven space and defense technologies from NASA and the Department of Defense into hardware and software solutions that solve today's complex problems, Viaspace benefits from patent and software licenses from Caltech, which manages NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

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