We are pleased to announce the publication of our new article "Data-driven sparse modeling of oscillations in plasma space propulsion" in the context of ZARATHUSTRA, published with Open Access. In this work, we present a novel algorithm...

Enrique Bello, member of the ZARATHUSTRA team, successfully defended his thesis "Analysis of turbulent transport in Hall-effect plasma thrusters". Apart from his thesis, his work resulted in 2 publications, one published and one submitted...

Our team had the opportunity to present our research in person during the 738th International Electric Propulsion Conference held at Toulouse, France, where we showcased our work and met fellow researchers. Our team participated with 8...

The third prototype of the Magnetic Arch Thruster cluster is featured in the June 2024 edition of the International Low Temperature Plasma Community Newsletter, in their "Research Highlights and Breakthroughs" section. A photo showing the...

The ZARATHUSTRA team is inviting you to join our team. Apply until June 30 2024 for one of our open PhD positions to become part of our young, dynamic, and collaborative team in Madrid. We particularly welcome applications from women and...

Pedro Jiménez has successfully defended this PhD thesis “Analysis of the wave-plasma ineraction in electrodeless plasma thrusters”. Pedro's work included significant contributions to the ZARATHUSTRA project, the most important being his 2...

Marco Inchingolo has successfully defended this PhD thesis "Design, development, and characterization of a microwave electrodeless plasma thruster". The last part of this thesis was supported under the framework of the ZARATHUSTRA...

Célian Boye, member of the ZARATHUSTRA team, is currently at the ICARE Laboratory of the Centre national de la recherche scientifique for a 3-month research stay. The main focus of his stay is the advanced experimental testing of the...

On March 16th 2024, Mario Merino participated in an outreach activity for gifted students at the Instituto Gerardo Diego de Pozuelo de Alarcón in Madrid. The students discovered what is plasma and how we can use it to create very...

On March 2nd, 2024, Mario Merino, PI of the ZARATHUSTRA project, was appointed as Full Professor (Catedrático de Universidad) of Aerospace Engineering at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. This accomplishment highlights the significance of...

Our new research paper "Thrust measurements of a waveguide electron cyclotron resonance thruster" just got published in the Journal of Applied Physics. We are especially happy that it was also selected by the editor as "Editor's Pick"!...

A new article, "Non-Maxwellian electron effects on the macroscopic response of a Hall thruster discharge from an axial–radial kinetic model", published on Plasma Sources Science and Technology is co-authored by Enrique Bello Benitez,...

Our new seminal publication "An implicit, conservative electrostatic particle-in-cell algorithm for paraxial magnetic nozzles" has just been published in the Journal of Computational Physics. Co-authored by Pedro Jiménez, Luis Chacon,...

During the week of January 22-28, 2024, the ZARATHUSTRA team hosted Dr. Luis Chacón, Senior Scientist, at the Theoretical Division of Los Álamos National Laboratory (LANL). This visit deepens and extends the ongoing collaboration with...

Davide Maddaloni performed a research internship at ONERA Palaiseau in October-December 2023, under the supervision of Victor Desangles and Federico Boni. He used an array of fast plasma probes to characterize the oscillations in the...

On November 21, 2023 the Royal Academy of Engineering (Real Academia de Ingeniería) issued the Young Researcher Medal to Mario Merino, PI of the ZARATHUSTRA Project. The medal recognizes his outstanding contributions to the design,...

We are happy to announce the publication of "Analysis of a cusped helicon plasma thruster discharge" that just got published at Plasma Sources Science and Technology. Among the co-authors figure two members of the Zarathustra team: Pedro...

Our team had the opportunity to present our research in person during the 76th Annual Gaseous Electronics Conference held at the Michigan League, Ann Arbor, Michigan, where we showcased our work and met fellow researchers. Mario Merino...

Matteo Ripoli and Borja Bayón attended the 1st Electric Propulsion Summer School, organized be the European Space Agency Noordwijk, Netherlands during October 10-12, 2023. The 3-day Summer School was the perfect opportunity to learn more...

Last week dozens of people had the opportunity to learn mor about how we are revolutionizing  the design and development of new aerospace technology. Mario Merino and Pedro Jiménez delivered an interactive talk about how the use of...

On the 27th of September 2023, Mario Merino gave a talk to Colegio Mayor Universitario Chaminade in Madrid, about the development of the plasma space thrusters of the future. The talk was aimed at university students interested in delving...

Mario Merino, Principal Investigator or ZARATHUSTRA was an Invited Speaker in the International Conference on Research and Applications of Plasmas (PLASMA), held in September 18-22, 2023 in Warsaw, Poland. Mario shared the scope and...

Check out the new review co-authored by ZARATHUSTRA Principal Investigator Mario Merino, "Kinetic electron cooling in magnetic nozzles: experiments and modeling". The publication is a collaboration between researchers from Seoul National...

The latest ZARATHUSTRA results were presented in this year's edition of the Aerospace Europe Conference. Our team member and doctoral candidate Célian Boyé gave an oral presentation with the title "Preliminary analysis of the magnetic...

The International Conference on Phenomena in Ionized Gases (ICPIG) took place in Egmond aan Zee, The Netherlands, on July 9 - 14, 2023. Three members of the ZARATHUSTRA team were able to attend and present their research progress: Borja...

The PhD students of the ZARATHUSTRA team had the opportunity to present the status of their research in this year's Doctoral Meetings organized on the 22nd, 24th, 29th & 31st of May 2023by the PhD Programme in Aerospace Engineering of...

Congratulations to Borja Bayón for successfully defending his MSc thesis "Sparse Regression for the Breathing Mode Instability: Extracting Governing Equations from Hall Effect Thrusters Simulation Data" and achieving the maximum grade. We...

Hi! My name is Matteo Ripoli, and I have recently joined the ZARATHUSTRA team as a PhD student. My thesis is about the study of plasma instabilities in magnetic nozzles, and I would like to give you a brief summary of my work here at the...

Hi there everybody! My name is Pedro Jiménez. Let me tell you a little bit about my research and what has brought me to the amazing ZARATHUSTRA team. I studied Aerospace Engineering, but I’ve always been inclined to physics and...

Check out the new Open Access publication from the ZARATHUSTRA team: Plasma acceleration in a magnetic arch. The paper models and simulates for the first time the plasma expansion in the magnetic arch that forms when two cylindrical...

The IEEE International Conference on Plasma Science (ICOPS) took place in Santa Fe, New Mexico, on May 21-25. Pedro Jimenez gave two presentations on the results of the ZARATHUSTRA project, highlighting the progress made on experiments...

This May ZARATHUSTRA's P.I. Mario Merino was appointed as Adjunct Vice Rector for Inovation, Technology Transfer and Science Park. This position allows him to play an active role on issues related to the research activity of teaching...

On May 9-12, the EPIC Workshop 2023 took place at the “Città della Scienza” conference centre in Naples, Italy. ZARATHUSTRA's PI, Mario Merino, had the opportunity to give a presentation about the project. In his talk he highlighted the...

On April 27th, two members of the ZARATHUSTRA team presented their research progress in the Plasma Processing and Technology International Conference (PlasmaTech) 2023, which was held in Lisbon, Portugal. The conference highlighted...

Mario Merino was interviewed today by Manuel Seara, director of the program "A Hombros de Gigantes" in the national radio (RNE). They spoke of rockets, chemical propulsion, and plasma thrusters, with...

Nuestro Investigador Principal, Mario Merino, ha sido entrevistado por la Fundación para el Conocimiento madri+d en notiweb. Durante la entrevista, el profesor Merino nos habla sobre su trabajo de investigación en el diseño, modelado,...

November 2022. Diego García Lahuerta, a member of our ZARATHUSTRA team, and Davide Poli, a member of EP2, have participated in a workshop organized in the framework of the XXII Madrid Science and Innovation Week. The attendees had the...

Greetings! My name is Borja Bayón Buján, and I just joined the ZARATHUSTRA team as a Research Assistant. I am currently finishing UC3M’s Master in Space Engineering (MiSE) and as part of my Final Master Thesis I will use data-driven...

This coming Wednesday, November 9, 2022, Davide Maddaloni and our PI, Mario Merino, will show us how a plasma rocket works. The workshop will take place during the XXII Science and Innovation Week 2022, organized by the Community of...

On October 3, the 75th Annual Gaseous Electronics Conference was held in Sendai, Japan. Our PI, Mario Merino, was one of the invited speakers with the presentation "Electrodeless plasma thrusters and magnetized plasma expansions for space...

Our PhD student, Pedro Jimenez, has recently completed a research visit to Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in New Mexico, USA. Under the supervision of Luis Chacon and as part of the Applied Mathematics and Plasma Physics group at...

Some of our team members, Diego García-Lahuerta, Célian Boyé, and Davide Maddaloni, have presented their work on the ZARATHUSTRA project at the PhD Doctoral Meetings - UC3M, which took place during 2022 – 15 & 16 June. It was a good...

ZARATHUSTRA's PI, Mario Merino, has been awarded the prestigious Prof. Kuriki award to young professionals by the Electric Rocket Propulsion Society (ERPS) for his contributions to the development of Electrodeless Plasma Thrusters (EPTs)....

ZARATHUSTRA's PI, Mario Merino, will present the first results of the project at the upcoming International Electric Propulsion Conference (IEPC), which will take place in Boston (USA) on June 19-23, 2022. The paper 'Preliminary model of...

Pedro Jiménez, a team member EP2 research group, is going to present the paper "Radiofrequency Plasma Heating for Electrodeless Space Thruster Applications" at IMPI 56, where we showcase the research lines of the group on the modeling of...

Hello reader! My name is Davide Maddaloni, a member of the Zarathustra team as a PhD student. Let me introduce myself. My thesis is about detecting, analyzing and understanding the oscillations occurring within the plasma of different...

The first joint workshop between the ERC Starting Grant projects NEXTFLOW (Next-generation flow diagnostics for control) and ZARATHUSTRA (Revolutionizing advanced electrodeless plasma thrusters for space transportation) took place...

Our principal investigator, Mario Merino, presented yesterday our ERC project at the Physics Department of UC3M. Mario Merino talked about the main objectives of our project and the first results of our research. He also took the...

The EP2 research team is organizing the next edition of the International ExB Plasmas Workshop. This Workshop will take place on February 16-18, 2022, and will be online and free for all those interested in attending. All the information,...

Check out our new publication: Mario Merino, Judit Nuez and Eduardo Ahedo (2021): “Fluid-kinetic model of a propulsive magnetic nozzle“. Plasma Sources Science and Technology. Abstract A...

Si quieres saber cómo funcionan los cohetes de plasma y cuáles son los objetivos del proyecto de nuestro proyecto, escucha la entrevista a nuestro IP, Mario Merino, realizada por la Asociación Española para el Avance de la Ciencia (AEAC)...

Read the recent press release about our project ZARATHUSTRA with an interview of the Principal Investigator, Mario Merino.

Next week the first Seminar on the Aerospace Science and Technology series by the PhD in Aerospace program will take place. The seminars will be dedicated to the two ERC Starting Grants in the Aerospace department, and Mario Merino will...

Welcome to the new webpage of the ERC-ZARATHUSTRA project.  While it is still under work, you can already find information about the project and the team using the menu at the top of the page. Enjoy!