One of the top engineers work on NASA’scontroversial EM Drivethruster at theEagleworks Laboratoryat the Johnson Space Center in Texas has speak publicly about the current state of matter of the project . This is the first verbatim update in months , as NASA is keep a very loaded lid on the developments .
The latest news regarding the EM Drive , which produce a thrust on the face of it from nowhere , comes from Paul March , one of the primary investigator on the EM Drive , and was published on theNASA Spaceflight meeting place . The mail is in reply to an unpublished newspaper publisher that claims the unaccounted stab is generated by theLorentz forcebetween the EM Drive and the Earth ’s magnetized field , something that March pronounce his test shew is not rightful .
“ I will tell you that we first build up and instal a 2nd contemporaries , closed facial expression magnetic damper that reduce the stray magnetic fields in the vacuum chamber by at least an order of magnitude and any Lorentz force fundamental interaction it could produce , ” commented March in the post on October 28 . “ And yet the anomalous stab signal persist … ” he add .
March also arrogate that in the tardy development , thermal expansion of the thruster is taken into account to reduce all possible sources of error . But the anomalous thrust is still being watch over , bespeak a yet unexplained cause for it .
Once the test at the Eagleworks Laboratory are complete , they will be subjected to main verification and proof at theGlenn Research Centre , at theJohns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory , and at theJet Propulsion Laboratory .
The EM Drive thruster is a hypothetic pusher that uses no fuel . It uses a magnetron , a high - powered vacuum tube where the fundamental interaction between a magnetic field and negatron generate microwaves . The magnetron sends the microwave into a truncated cone , hit the short remainder and , according to the exponent of this technology , generate knife thrust .
The EM Drive is controversial because it violates Newton ’s conservation of momentum laws . The EM Drive does n’t apply any known personnel on the pocket-size end of its cone , so the thruster should not move .
The supposed thrust is little , on the purchase order of the micronewton ( the weightiness of a mosquito on Earth ) , so unaccounted phenomena could be mimicking thrust . Such a small force play might not seem utilitarian for space traveling , but it would be important when scale up in a spacecraft . If the EM Drive becomes a reality , some say it could be used to reach the sharpness of the Solar System inmonths not 10 .
