Dr. Alec Gallimore

Chief Executive Officer

Dr. Alec Gallimore is an electric propulsion expert with more than two hundred citable publications in the field.

Over the past twenty years, Dr. Gallimore has conducted experiments with Hall thrusters, ion thrusters, magnetoplasmadynamic (MPD) thrusters, and arcjets, and has implemented a number of laser and probe based diagnostic techniques to characterize EP engines.

Dr. Gallimore also has a significant amount of experience testing arcjets with nitrogen and hydrogen propellants. Dr. Gallimore is routinely called upon to assist in the flight qualification of Hall thrusters and ion engines, and has generated much of the plume data used by spacecraft designers and plume-modeling code developers throughout the world.

Dr. Gallimore (with Dr. Gilchrist) has employed microwave diagnostics techniques to characterize arcjet and Hall thruster plumes under AFOSR sponsorship and has designed MPD thrusters and Hall thrusters for NASA.

Dr. Brian Gilchrist

President

Dr. Brian Gilchrist has 23 years of industrial and academic experience centering on microwave and plasma technology and includes the development of space-flight hardware.

In particular, he has over 12 years of industrial microwave systems and technology research and development experience. He continues this RF and plasma experience in his academic and research roles at the University of Michigan's Radiation Laboratory for applied electromagnetics.

His research involves developing electrodynamic tethers as a new propellantless space propulsion technology, microwave and probe-based plasma diagnostics for the ionosphere and for plasma electric propulsion systems, and spacecraft technology.

He is active in the development of consumable-free electron emission systems (using field emission) for ED tethers and new ED tether technology. He was a Co-I on the NASA MSFC ProSEDS electrodynamic tether experiment providing plasma diagnostics and high-voltage tether control instrumentation and directed a team of over 100 students to develop Michigan's first-ever student satellite (called Icarus) for the NASA ProSEDS mission.

He was Principal Investigator for the Shuttle Electrodynamic Tether System (SETS) experiment that flew on the STS-75 shuttle mission in 1996 as part of the Tethered Satellite System (TSS) mission. He was a Co-I on an Air Force program to develop a high powered Hall electric propulsion thruster and was a Co-PI on a related program investigating spacecraft electromagnetic interaction effects of advanced electric propulsion systems (with Dr. Gallimore).

He was also PI for an Air Force effort to investigate fundamental issues associated with propagating artificially generated relativistic electron beams in space.

Dr. Peter Peterson

Director of Research

Dr. Peterson has over 13 years of theoretical and experimental experience in the field of plasma technologies with over 11 years of this time working in the space-based plasma propulsion technologies. He has been involved in the development and research of a Tokamak plasma disruption experimental simulator, coaxial plasma accelerator, an atmospheric plasma generation technique (Dielectric Barrier Discharge) for materials processing, and research into the use of applied magnetic fields on plasma torches to address lifetime issues.

Dr. Peterson completed his doctoral research on the development of a double-stage Hall thruster for increased operating efficiencies at low and high specific impulses.

Recently, Dr. Peterson has been involved in the design and testing of NASA GRC’s Hall thruster systems. These systems include 50 kW xenon and krypton high-power systems, the HIgh Voltage Hall ACcelerator (HiVHAC) thrusters, development of a Long-Life-Hall thruster system, and design of a multi-hundred kW thruster for the NASA’s Exploration Systems and Research Technology (ES&RT) effort. He has authored or co-authored over 17 papers in electric propulsion and plasma research.

Dr. Sven Bilén

Senior Research Scientist

Dr. Sven Bilén has considerable experience designing, building, and testing spacecraft hardware.

In 1999, he was the deputy project manager for the University of Michigan portion of NASA's Propulsive Small Expendable Deployer System (ProSEDS). In the years 1992–96, he worked on the Shuttle Electrodynamic Tether System hardware for the first Tethered Satellite System (TSS-1) mission and its reflight (TSS-1R).

He has managed two Get Away Special payloads at Michigan and Penn State, which flew on shuttles STS-89, STS-88, and STS-108.

Dr. Bilén is the Principal Investigator for the NittanySat nanosatellite. He has developed or is developing a number of instruments that have flown or will fly on sounding rockets and orbital platforms. He also has experience with vacuum testing programs and testing of spacecraft hardware in thermal-vacuum and in plasma environments, as well as experience with microwave circuits and electromagnetic simulation software.