Bogong Thruster

Bogong Thruster

The Bogong thruster is a cold gas thruster using Naphthalene for propellant. The Bogong thruster produces thrust using sublimated gas from solid Naphthalene. It has numerous significant benefits: very cost-effective, simplicity, safe handling, non-corrosive and low-pressure gas derived from a solid propellant. In particular, it can be employed in an Attitude and Orbit Control System, which is critical to all satellites for communications, orbit raising, collision avoidance, inter-satellite communications and deep space manoeuvring where magnetorquers cannot be used. It enables different sizes and shapes of satellites to manoeuvre and corrects their path during their missions. 
The first generation of the Bogong thruster was conceived, designed and manufactured in 2021-2022. It was successfully integrated into a Skykraft satellite and launched into orbit in early January 2023. The first generation of Bogong shows the validity of Naphthalene as a unique propellant. SP3, in collaboration with Boswell Technologies, has developed this thruster and is working on the second generation with improvements on different aspects of the thruster.