Busek Co. Inc. is a spacecraft propulsion company providing thrusters, electronics, and complete systems for spacecraft. Busek spaceflight heritage includes the first US Hall thruster in space, the first electrospray thruster in space, four micro-pulsed plasma thrusters flown aboard FalconSat-3, and a BHT-200 Hall thruster flown aboard FalconSat-5.
History
Busek was founded in 1985 by Vlad Hruby and incorporated in Natick, Massachusetts. Starting as a small laboratory outside of Boston, Massachusetts, Busek facilities have expanded to over 20,000 square feet of laboratory, engineering, testing, and product assembly space. Aerojet, under license with Busek, manufactured a 4 kW Hall thruster which was flown aboard the USAF AEHF communications spacecraft. The thruster is credited with saving the first satellite by raising it to geosynchronous orbit after failure of the spacecraft's main apogee engine.
Busek has demonstrated a variety of experimental xenon Hall thrusters at power levels up to and exceeding 20 kW. Busek has also developed Hall thrusters that operate on iodine, bismuth, carbon dioxide, magnesium, zinc, and other substances. In 2008, a xenon fueled Busek Hall thruster appeared in National Geographic. An iodine fueled 200 W Busek Hall thruster will fly on NASA's upcoming iSat mission. Busek is also preparing a 600 Watt iodine Hall thruster system for future Discovery Class missions. Other publicized Busek technologies include RF ion engines and a resistojet rocket. Another focus is CubeSat propulsion, proposed for the 2018 Lunar IceCube mission. , Busek was also working on a DARPA-funded program called DARPA Phoenix, which aims to recycle some parts of on-orbit spacecraft. In September 2013, NASA awarded an 18‑month Phase I contract to Busek to develop an experimental concept called High Aspect Ratio Porous Surface microthruster system for use in tiny CubeSat spacecraft. Busek patented the concept of an Air Breathing Hall Effect Thruster in 2004, and with funding from the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts, started in 2011 a feasibility study that would be applied to Mars, where the system would breath and ionize atmospheric carbon dioxide. The MABHET concept is based on the same general principles as JAXA's ABIE or ESA's ram-EP.
In order to deal with human-caused space debris, Busek proposed in 2014 a remotely controlled vehicle to rendezvous with debris, capture it, and attach a smaller deorbit satellite to the debris, then drag the debris/smallsat-combination, by means of a tether, to the desired location. The larger sat would then tow the debris/smallsat combination to either deorbit or move it to a higher graveyard orbit by means of electric propulsion. The larger satellite is named the ORbital DEbris Remover, or ORDER which will carry over 40 SUL deorbit sats plus sufficient propellant for the large number of orbital maneuvers required to effect a 40-satellite debris removal mission over many years. Busek is projecting the cost for such a space tug to be.
