These are the need to repeatedly launch rockets to replace satellites after they fall back to Earth, and the volume of space junk littering orbit. But Zenno Astronautics, which is based in Auckland’s LevelTwo technology incubator, is developing a magnetic propulsion system powered by solar panels that could in theory keep satellites in space indefinitely. “Sometimes you need satellites with instruments that are relatively large but which don’t need to be ‘monolithic’ to do certain measurements properly. “So you can imagine flying satellites in formation could give a similar performance to an extremely large, very expensive satellite.”SUPPLIED Professor Guglielmo Aglietti says Zenno’s space drive is a good concept. One of the challenges will be that magnetic fields don’t tend to be “nice and uniform” and can oscillate, Aglietti says.

Source: Stuff October 10, 2020 15:56 UTC