This increasing interest on EP and its associated costs benefits, together with the need for further performances and competitiveness has been transferred to the EP thrusters and the EP subsystems manufacturers and integrators.Įlectric propulsion is currently considered by all space actors as a key and revolutionary technology for the new generations of commercial and scientific satellites.
HELIUM ELECTRIC PROPULSION FULL
Since this point, European developments in this area have been accelerated.in order to offer full electric and hybrid telecommunication platforms to satellite operators. In 2012 Boeing offered the use of EP for orbit raising and station keeping saving thousands of kilograms of mass and decreasing the satellite price and its launch by hundreds of millions dollars with its Boeing 702 platform. Since the new century, the constantly increasing levels of electrical power on new developed spacecraft allows EP to be a very realistic and serious alternative to chemical propulsion, and the use of this technology for different type of missions is already a common practice internationally (in Europe i.e: Artemis, SMART-1, GOCE, AlphaSat, Bepi Colombo, SmallGeo, NEOSat, Electra).įor commercial satellites in the Telecommunications market, the use of EP for Station Keeping maneuvers is currently an option and in many cases a requirement for satellite manufacturers. The level of development and flight heritages deeply influences the final selection of a specific EPS.Įlectric Propulsion opens up new opportunities for EuropeĪlthough studied, developed and tested for several decades, certain EPS had not been readily employed in the early times of space missions mainly due to the unavailability of sufficient electrical power on board the spacecraft. From the most mature ones (TRL8-9) the most promising technologies for Europe are HET, GIE and HEMPT.ĭepending on the field of application and the specific mission requirements, a specific system level trade off should be performed to identify which thruster systems may be more or less attractive, depending on their particular thrust capabilities, electrical power consumption and other performance characteristics. All the thrusters types mentioned above have been and/or are being developed in Europe to a certain extent. In Europe, developments have been carried out in all the different areas of electric propulsion over the last four decades. Field Emission Electric Propulsion (FEEP) thruster,.High Efficiency Multistage Plasma Thruster (HEMPT),.
Space Science, Interplanetary, and Space exploration.įor these different types of missions and requirements, the technology is faced with operational challenges in order to be able to cope with different type of maneuvers, such as: electric transfer from GTO to GEO, station keeping, interorbital transfer, interplanetary cruise, continuous LEO operations (air-drag control), (extreme) fine and/or highly agile attitude control, Long-endurance missions, etc.Ī number of different Electric Propulsion Systems (EPS) exist, based on the following thrusters, (non-exhaustively):.Earth Observation, Earth Science, constellations) The different applications which currently make or may make use of Electric Propulsion Systems in the future, are: Electric Propulsion applications and type of thrusters
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