Plasmas in Space and Electric Sails

More than 99% of all the matter in the universe is in the fourth state of matter called plasma. From the stars themselves to the matter between planets, stars and galaxies it is almost entirely plasma. This talk will (hopefully) demystify plasmas from their presence and applications on Earth to their abundance and uses in space. Also featured will be some of the work Lachlan is doing on Electric Sails, a spacecraft propulsion method powered by plasmas in space.

Lachlan Goulden

Lachlan Goulden is a current Physics PhD student at the University of Sydney. His research is focused on a unique spacecraft propulsion method called Electric sails. His supervisors are Professor Iver Cains the Director of CUAVA (Centre for CubeSats, UAVs and their Applications) and Associate Professor Joe Khachan.

Lachlan was awarded a Bachelor of Science (Physics) at the University of Wollongong and then completed his Bachelor of Science (Honours) (Physics) in 2020 at the University of Sydney. His honours thesis was on modelling electrodynamic tethers for CubeSat propulsion.

After graduating, he worked in a photonics lab at the Sydney Nanoscience Hub (SNH) as part of the Eggleton Research Group working toward a PhD. While there he was awarded the 2022 IEEE Photonics Conference best student paper finalist on his work demonstrating quasi-light storage in a photonic chip.

He eventually decided to instead pursue his current PhD which is more in line with his interests with space and spacecraft propulsion. His paper ‘Measurements of the force produced by a negatively charged electric sail in a pulsed cathodic arc plasma’ was selected as a featured article in the Journal Physics of Plasmas and had an American Institute of Physics (AIP) Scilight article about the paper.

Lachlan has been a member of SASI since he was five years old, this sparked a lifelong interest in astronomy, space and physics in general.