Project description
Alternative propulsion system for MEO and GEO telecommunications
Over half of the telecommunications and navigation satellites in Geostationary Earth Orbit (GEO) and Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) use Hall Effect Thruster (HET)-based electric propulsion systems. Fakel’s SPT-140d has been a popular choice due to its reliability and competitive pricing compared to alternatives. However, with the war in Ukraine disrupting supply chains, satellite manufacturers have sought alternatives. Safran's PPS©5000 has emerged as the new preferred option since February 2022. The EU-funded F4F project is aimed at developing an alternative propulsion system utilising SITAEL’s HT5k thruster. This thruster features magnetic shielding and is capable of being powered by both Xenon and Krypton. The project will integrate the thruster with Thales Belgium's Mk3 Power Processing Unit (PPU) and AST’s German low-pressure flow management solution. The goal is to demonstrate the performance of this system through comprehensive coupling tests.
Objective
Electric Propulsion systems based on HET thrusters are now the de facto standard for more than half of the GEO telecommunications and MEO navigation satellites launched each year, with Fakel's SPT-140d model representing the solution until early 2022 baseline for nearly all LSIs worldwide. This is due to its extreme reliability, the long heritage accumulated over the years, and the considerably lower selling price than the few existing competitors (Safran -France-, Aerojet and Busek -USA-). With the outbreak of war in Ukraine, all LSI found themselves in the need to find an alternative to Fakel's Hall effect thruster. As the only product that can be purchased on the western market together with Aerojet Rocketdyne's XR-5, from February 2022 Safran's PPS©5000 became the de facto new incumbent as it is not subject to ITAR restrictions.
The F4F project aims at developing an alternative system, based on a different thruster, SITAEL’s HT5k, featuring magnetic shielding for very long life operations and able to be fed with both Xenon and Krypton.
The TU will be coupled with an evolution of flight-proven Thales Belgium Mk3 PPU, the Mk3 EVO, and with an European solution for low pressure flow management from the German Company AST.
The three subsystems will be modified to reduce complexity and limit at the bare minimum ITAR/EAR controlled items.
Through a full coupling test, F4F will demonstrate performance at system level with the thruster unit operated with both xenon and krypton, and advance its TRL towards a full qualification.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
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CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
- natural scienceschemical sciencesinorganic chemistrynoble gases
- engineering and technologymechanical engineeringvehicle engineeringaerospace engineeringsatellite technology
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HORIZON-RIA - HORIZON Research and Innovation ActionsCoordinator
70042 Mola Di Bari
Italy
The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.