Ice2Thrust at the Space Propulsion Conference 2026

Ice2Thrust at the Space Propulsion Conference 2026 — Bari, Italy | 18–21 May 2026 | Bari, Italy | Session 92 — Thursday 21 May, 12:00

This week, our consortium partner Technical University of Munich (TUM) takes the stage at the 10th Space Propulsion Conference in Bari, Italy — one of Europe’s premier events dedicated to advances in space propulsion technology, jointly organised by the Association Aéronautique et Astronautique de France (3AF) and the European Space Agency (ESA).

Two members of the TUM team are representing the Ice2Thrust project at the conference: Sören Heizmann attends as a delegate, while Sascha Dengler will present original research from the project during Session 92 on Thursday 21 May at 12:00.

The Paper: Transpiration Cooling for Water Electrolysis Thrusters

Sascha Dengler’s presentation, entitled “Progress on transpiration cooling using additively manufactured porous metal for performance enhancement of water electrolysis propulsion thrusters”, addresses one of the most critical engineering challenges in the Ice2Thrust roadmap: making the WEP thruster hot enough to achieve high performance, while keeping its walls cool enough to survive.

Conventional Water Electrolysis Propulsion (WEP) thrusters burn a stoichiometric mixture of gaseous hydrogen and oxygen — a combination that delivers outstanding theoretical performance (specific impulse, or Isp, above 400 s), but also generates extreme thermal loads on the combustion chamber walls. The standard approach relies on extensive film cooling and high-temperature exotic materials (such as platinum-rhodium alloys), which drives up cost and reduces combustion efficiency by diluting the propellant mixture.

Transpiration cooling offers an elegant alternative: instead of injecting a separate coolant stream at the injector, a small fraction of propellant is fed directly through a porous combustion chamber liner, forming a protective film at the wall surface from the inside out. This approach reduces the required coolant mass flow, relaxes the material requirements, and — crucially — improves the combustion efficiency of the thruster. TUM is pursuing this concept using liners manufactured by additive manufacturing (3D printing), which allows precise control of the porous microstructure in a way that traditional sintering or machining cannot achieve.

Within the Ice2Thrust project, transpiration cooling is one of the core technological breakthroughs being pursued at TRL ≥ 5 — a world-first validation for this approach in a WEP context.

Why This Matters for Ice2Thrust

Ice2Thrust (S4I2T) is an EIC Pathfinder project under Horizon Europe (Grant 101161690), coordinated by the Technical University of Munich. The project’s mission is to develop a fully integrated, solar-powered Water Electrolysis Propulsion system that can outperform conventional chemical propulsion — using water as a green, low-cost, and easily storable propellant.

Today’s best available storable chemical propulsion systems reach a maximum Isp of around 324 s on the European market. WEP, if its combustion challenges are solved, has a theoretical Isp above 400 s. Closing that gap is exactly what the Ice2Thrust thruster programme — including the transpiration cooling research presented in Bari — is designed to do.

Beyond raw performance, the project envisions a self-sustaining in-space mobility infrastructure: water extracted from lunar or near-Earth asteroid (NEO) ice is processed and fed into a WEP system, enabling not only primary propulsion but also in-orbit refilling and lifetime extension for satellites. Every improvement in thruster efficiency directly improves the viability of that vision.

Attending the Conference?

If you are at the Space Propulsion Conference in Bari this week, make sure to attend Session 92 on Thursday 21 May at 12:00, and connect with Sascha and Sören from the TUM team. They are happy to discuss the latest results from Ice2Thrust.

For more on the conference programme, visit www.3af-spacepropulsion.com.