A revolutionary theory developed by a University of Plymouth scientist, which he believes could herald a new dawn in space propulsion, is being deployed commercially for the first time by a US-based company.
Dr Mike McCulloch, Lecturer in Geomatics, first put forward the idea of quantised inertia (QI) in 2007. QI predicts galaxy rotation without dark matter and, more practically, that quantum energy can be converted into thrust.
He then received $1.3million from the United States Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in 2018 for a study which aimed to make the concept a reality.
That work initially saw him collaborating with experimental scientists in Germany and in Spain, and that has since led to further work with laboratories in the United States.
One of those collaborations led to Dr McCulloch working with IVO Ltd, based in Virginia, and they have now unveiled the first pure electric thruster for satellites that uses zero fuel.
The IVO Quantum Drive is the world's first commercially viable and available pure electric propulsion technology to achieve legitimacy via thermal vacuum testing.
The thruster has been validated under the rigorous conditions it will see in space, with tests in a vacuum chamber also serving to validate thrust being developed by quantised inertia.
