MT Magazine September/October 2024

FEATURE STORY

THE SPACE ISSUE

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Nope. He’s now the vice president of manufacturing at Orbion Space Technology in Michigan – but some 550 miles northwest of Detroit, in Houghton, which is located about midway up the peak that sticks out from the top of the Upper Peninsula. At Orbion, instead of a production rate of 60 jobs per hour, they’re running at about 100 units – per year. (“We’ve got the capacity to go to 1,000 units per year,” he says.) Oh. And while a car is the size of, well, a car, Panella says that the thrusters Orbion produces are “about the size of a coffee mug.” Here’s one important thing about Panella’s background that he imparts to his colleagues at Orbion: production quality. He’s fluent in things like the Toyota Production System (which he says was instrumental in the development of the Cummins Production System, which he helped implement), the 5S methodology, and continuous improvement. All things vital to ensuring the success of a part. And that is really important because while the NHTSA can initiate a recall for cars and trucks on the road, that’s not feasible for Orbion. “We can’t have a failure," he says. "Obviously, if you produce something that’s used on Earth and there’s something wrong, you can take it back and repair it. But if it goes into space, it’s a one-way ticket. So we have a lot of processes in place to make sure these systems work.” And They’re There Because … As Houghton isn’t particularly close to, say, Cape Canaveral, one might wonder why it is where it is. The company was co founded in 2016 by Lyon “Brad” King, Ph.D., who was born and raised in Calumet, Michigan – which is even farther north than Houghton. King received his degrees from the University of Michigan and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the National Research Council at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in Boulder, Colorado, before returning to Michigan afterwards. He likes it there. One benefit to being located in Houghton is that it’s home to Michigan Technological University and the cadre of smart people at its aerospace-related programs, which is good when your business is actual, not figurative, rocket science. (King is on the faculty there.) The company has some 70 employees. Michigan Tech is well represented on that staff. From Outside In Panella became associated with Orbion when it was in its startup phase and he was consulting for the Michigan Economic Development Corp.’s SmartZone, a private-public partnership for job creation in the state. Panella was assigned to assist Orbion in his position helping companies associated with Michigan Tech develop manufacturing strategies. Before leaving his assignment at Orbion, he wrote a job

description for someone who would help the company ramp up its production. Six months later, in May 2020, Panella was hired. And they’ve been ramping up the output ever since. What They Build The primary product developed and produced at Orbion is the Aurora Hall-effect thruster. That is, the Aurora is a plasma thruster. There is a magnetic field (Orbion uses permanent magnets) that contains the propellent released from the tank. This is typically xenon, though krypton or argon can be used; xenon is more efficient because it has a higher density: 15 kg can be contained in an 8.29-liter tank at 1,300 psia, compared with a 39.37-liter tank for the equivalent amount of krypton and 97.25-liter tank for argon. The fuel is ionized by electrons from the satellite’s onboard power system (there are two connections between the thruster and the spacecraft: a 28-volt unregulated power connection and an RS-422 data connection), which then accelerates the ions so there are exhaust velocities on the order of 20,000 meters per second. While that may seem extreme, Panella notes that the thrust is equivalent to the weight of a dime. “These are not like the diesel engines that I manufactured earlier in my life,” he says, which could be the understatement of the year. But what, you may wonder, do these thrusters do? Panella explains they are fitted into commercial and government satellites. Satellites are being sent up in number on a single rocket, which then drops them off in the same orbit. “It is like people getting off at a bus stop. Then they have to go to their final location.” The thrusters allow the satellites to get to that location. Then they are used to keep them there. (Gravity wants to bring them back to Earth.)

Hall-effect thruster being tested by NASA at the Glenn Research Center. Electricity plus inert gas (e.g., xenon) results in propulsion in space. (Image courtesy of NASA.)