A new airplane uses charged molecules, not propellers or turbines, to fly

Author: Laurel Hamers / Source: Science News

an illustration of the new aircraft — ION POWER A new aircraft (illustrated) is propelled forward by streams of charged molecules moving among wires.

A newly designed airplane prototype does away with noisy propellers and turbines.

Instead, it’s powered by ionic wind: charged molecules, or ions, flowing in one direction and pushing the plane in the other.

That setup makes the aircraft nearly silent. Such stealth planes could be useful for monitoring environmental conditions or capturing aerial imagery without disturbing natural habitats below.

The aircraft is the first of its kind to be propelled in this way, researchers report in the Nov. 22 Nature. In 10 indoor test flights the small plane, which weighs about as much as a Chihuahua, traveled 40 to 45 meters for almost 10 seconds at a steady height, even gaining about half a meter of altitude over the course of a flight.

Most planes rely on spinning parts to move forward. In some, an engine turns a propeller that pushes the plane forward. Or a turbine sucks in air with a spinning fan, and then shoots out jets of gas that propel the plane forward.

Ionic wind is instead generated by a high-voltage electric field around a positively charged wire, called an emitter. The electricity, often supplied by batteries, makes electrons in the air collide with atoms and molecules, which then release other electrons. That creates a swarm of positively charged air molecules around the emitter, which are drawn to a negatively charged wire. The movement of molecules between the two wires, the ionic wind, can push a plane forward.

The current design uses four sets of these wires.