Development and Laboratory Testing of a CubeSat-Compatible Staged Ionic-Liquid Electrospray Propulsion System
Advances in propulsion systems are key to enabling independent deep-space CubeSat missions. Currently available electric propulsion technologies require relatively high power and thereby heavy power generation systems, severely limiting their utility for missions going away from the Sun. The ionic-l...
| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Article |
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American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics
2022
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| Online Access: | https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/138883 |
| _version_ | 1811085898063806464 |
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| author | Pettersson, Gustav M. Jia-Richards, Oliver Lozano, Paulo C. |
| author_facet | Pettersson, Gustav M. Jia-Richards, Oliver Lozano, Paulo C. |
| author_sort | Pettersson, Gustav M. |
| collection | MIT |
| description | Advances in propulsion systems are key to enabling independent deep-space CubeSat missions. Currently available electric propulsion technologies require relatively high power and thereby heavy power generation systems, severely limiting their utility for missions going away from the Sun. The ionic-liquid electrospray is known to have high power efficiency but a relatively short lifetime in its present state, limiting the total impulse available in such systems. This lifetime limit can be overcome by using several stages of thrusters, which are used in sequence to multiply the total system lifetime. In this paper, we present the design details and laboratory testing results for a staging system that is compatible with the CubeSat standard. This system will later be demonstrated in space on the STEP-1 satellite, which could enable an exciting new era of accessible CubeSat exploration around the solar system. |
| first_indexed | 2024-09-23T13:17:15Z |
| format | Article |
| id | mit-1721.1/138883 |
| institution | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| last_indexed | 2024-09-23T13:17:15Z |
| publishDate | 2022 |
| publisher | American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | mit-1721.1/1388832022-01-12T03:18:17Z Development and Laboratory Testing of a CubeSat-Compatible Staged Ionic-Liquid Electrospray Propulsion System Pettersson, Gustav M. Jia-Richards, Oliver Lozano, Paulo C. Advances in propulsion systems are key to enabling independent deep-space CubeSat missions. Currently available electric propulsion technologies require relatively high power and thereby heavy power generation systems, severely limiting their utility for missions going away from the Sun. The ionic-liquid electrospray is known to have high power efficiency but a relatively short lifetime in its present state, limiting the total impulse available in such systems. This lifetime limit can be overcome by using several stages of thrusters, which are used in sequence to multiply the total system lifetime. In this paper, we present the design details and laboratory testing results for a staging system that is compatible with the CubeSat standard. This system will later be demonstrated in space on the STEP-1 satellite, which could enable an exciting new era of accessible CubeSat exploration around the solar system. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) 2022-01-11T18:19:41Z 2022-01-11T18:19:41Z 2022-01 Article http://purl.org/eprint/type/ConferencePaper https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/138883 Pettersson, Gustav M., Jia-Richards, Oliver and Lozano, Paulo C. 2022. "Development and Laboratory Testing of a CubeSat-Compatible Staged Ionic-Liquid Electrospray Propulsion System." AIAA SciTech Forum. 10.2514/6.2022-0040 10.2514/6.2022-0040 AIAA SciTech Forum Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ application/pdf American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Oliver Jia-Richards |
| spellingShingle | Pettersson, Gustav M. Jia-Richards, Oliver Lozano, Paulo C. Development and Laboratory Testing of a CubeSat-Compatible Staged Ionic-Liquid Electrospray Propulsion System |
| title | Development and Laboratory Testing of a CubeSat-Compatible Staged Ionic-Liquid Electrospray Propulsion System |
| title_full | Development and Laboratory Testing of a CubeSat-Compatible Staged Ionic-Liquid Electrospray Propulsion System |
| title_fullStr | Development and Laboratory Testing of a CubeSat-Compatible Staged Ionic-Liquid Electrospray Propulsion System |
| title_full_unstemmed | Development and Laboratory Testing of a CubeSat-Compatible Staged Ionic-Liquid Electrospray Propulsion System |
| title_short | Development and Laboratory Testing of a CubeSat-Compatible Staged Ionic-Liquid Electrospray Propulsion System |
| title_sort | development and laboratory testing of a cubesat compatible staged ionic liquid electrospray propulsion system |
| url | https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/138883 |
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