Objective
The objective of the research program is to design, optimize and develop a space plasma thruster based on helicon-radio-frequency technology and its application to a nano-satellite for attitude and position control. Moreover a detailed feasibility study will be also conducted to evaluate the possibility of using the plasma thruster to heat and decompose a secondary propellant. The feasibility study will asses the possibility of building up a combined-two-mode-thruster able to operate in the low-thrust high-efficiency plasma-mode and high-thrust low-efficiency secondary-propellant-plasma-enhanced mode. Only the plasma thruster will be developed and fully tested during this study. The main characteristics of the thruster are: Power 50 W Weight within 1.5 kg Thrust >1.5 mN Specific Impulse (Isp) >1200 s The program will develop thought the following steps: a) Deep numerical-theoretical investigation through dedicated plasma-simulation tools. b) Extensive experimental campaign to validate codes, to investigate the physics phenomena involved and to proof thruster performance. c) The development of a thruster-prototype to be mounted on board of a mini-satellite to demonstrate technology feasibility, d)The study of all the critical issues related to the application to a mini-satellite e) the design and manufacturing of the mini-satellite mock up including all critical components f) analysis of scaling law to lower and higher power. As a final results of the project, a detailed analysis will be conducted in order to evaluate the possible application of the thruster in space missions requiring low thrust accurate attitude and position control.
Fields of science
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
Programme(s)
Call for proposal
FP7-SPACE-2007-1
See other projects for this call
Funding Scheme
CP - Collaborative project (generic)Coordinator
35122 Padova
Italy
See on map
Participants (14)
91120 Palaiseau
See on map
00185 Roma
See on map
00131 Roma
See on map
00196 Roma
See on map
61070 Kharkiv
See on map
28040 Madrid
See on map
40126 Bologna
See on map
125047 MOSCOW
See on map
2201 DK Noordwijk
See on map
42300 Roanne
See on map
2470 Skovlunde
See on map
4726 TG Heerle
See on map
37041 ALBAREDO D ADIGE
See on map
75794 Paris
See on map