Single crystal mo solar thermal thruster for microsatellites

One potentially attractive propulsion concept offering significant payload gains for orbit transfer from LEO to higher orbits, station keeping and attitude control of spacecraft is thermal propulsion using light gas (typically hydrogen) as propellant and various kinds of heat energy. Solar Thermal Propulsion (STP) is a typical thermal propulsion with high Isp (500 – 1,000 s) in an appropriate thrust magnitude range and provides possibly much less space pollution than conventional chemical propulsion.

This paper presents the test results of a 30 mm dia. (medium-sized) windowless type of single crystal Mo thruster for orbit transfer of 50 kg class microsatellites. The cavity dia. is 20 mm, double the size of the previous model, and can apply to a primary solar reflector of up to 3.5 m dia., which is the maximum size containable in the H-II rocket fairing without segmentation. The performed mission analyses indicate that this size of STP is suitable to orbit transfer of 50 kg class microsatellites, such as LEO to GEO, or only multiple apogee kicks from GTO to GEO or deep space missions.