University of Alberta

Published purpose

Spacecraft in the weightless environment rely on fuel tanks to contain the fluid mixtures for propulsion. In weightlessness, this fluid reorients to minimize its thermodynamic energy and can take on unknowns shapes inside the fuel tank. Thus, guiding the fuel in the desired fashion to a spacecraft’s thrusters remains a challenging task. To circumvent the uncertainty of fuel supply to the thrusters, fuel tanks are purposely made larger to hold extra fuel, in addition to other necessary arrangements to force fuel to the thrusters. The larger fuel tanks and additional parts to supply on-demand seamless fuel result in additional mass, volume, and weight to space propulsion systems and to overall mission costs. The proposed payload development focuses on prototyping, testing, and demonstrating an innovative space technology to mitigate the disadvantages of current spacecraft fuel tanks, by engineering new fuel tanks that self-guide the fuel to occupy desired locations within the tank. The hypothesized passive liquid transport technique will therefore enable fuel tanks for spacecraft to be smaller, lighter and less bulky, which will reduce the costs associated with design, launch and operation.