Overview of NASA’s Solar Electric Propulsion Project

NASA is continuing to develop and qualify a state of the art 13 kW-class Advanced Electric Propulsion System (AEPS) for NASA exploration missions through a contract with Aerojet Rocketdyne (AR). An objective of the AEPS project is accelerate the adoption of high power electric propulsion technologies by reducing the risk and uncertainty of integrating Solar Electric Propulsion (SEP) technologies into space flight systems. NASA and AR have recently initiated testing of engineering hardware including the Hall Current Thruster (HCT), Power Processing Unit (PPU), and Xenon Flow Controller (XFC) at both the component and system levels. The successful completion of these tests will provide the required information to advance the AEPS system towards Critical Design Review. In support of the AEPS contract, NASA and JPL have been performing risk reduction activities to address specific concerns of this higher power Hall thruster propulsion system. These risk reduction activities have included long duration wear testing of the Technology Demonstration Unit (TDU) Hall thruster and cathode hardware, thermal cycling of TDU cathode heaters and coils, plasma plume measurements, and performed early circuit testing of the AEPS PPU design. In addition to the propulsion system development, the SEP project is developing the Plasma Diagnostic Package (PDP) and the SEP Testbed. The PDP is designed for use in conjunction with a high-powered electric propulsion (EP) system to characterize in-space operation. The SEP Testbed system is being developed to demonstrate 1 SEP Project Lead Engineer, NASA GRC Electric Propulsion System Branch, Peter.Y.Peterson@nasa.gov. 2 PPE Ion Propulsion System Lead, NASA GRC Electric Propulsion Systems Branch, Daniel.A.Herman@nasa.gov. 3 SEP Test Lead, NASA GRC Electric Propulsion Systems Branch, Hani.Kamhawi-1@nasa.gov. 4 SEP Team Member, NASA GRC Electric Propulsion Systems Branch. 5 SEP Power Processing Lead, NASA GRC Power Management and Distribution Branch, Dragos.Dinca@nasa.gov 6 SEP Team Member, NASA GRC Power Management and Distribution Branch. 7 SEP PDP Project Lead Engineer, NASA GRC Science And Space Technology Systems Branch, Kenneth.M.Criswell@nasa.gov 8 SEP Thruster Lead, JPL Electric Propulsion Group, Richard.R.Hofer@jpl.nasa.gov. 9 SEP Team Member, JPL Electric Propulsion Group. 10 SEP AEPS System Engineering Lead, JPL Electric Propulsion Group, Charles.E.Garner@jpl.nasa.gov 11 SEP AEPS XFC Lead, JPL Propulsion and Fluid Flight Systems Group, Matthew.K.Kowalkowski@jpl.nasa.gov