CUBIC AEROSPACE, LLC — Department of Defense SBIR Phase I: AF162-007

Description

Electric orbit-raising offers significant advantages to GEO spacecraft users and operators. Electric propulsion decreases the required spacecraft fuel mass by as much as 90%, and enables the elimination of large tanks, thrusters, valves, and other propulsion subsystem components when a conventional hydrazine or bi-propellant system is not required. These optimizations can reduce the launch mass of a spacecraft by as much as 50%. However, the fuel efficiency of electric thrusters comes at a cost. Their maximum thrust is a tiny fraction of a conventional orbit raising thruster, requiring five to ten times as many days to arrive on-station. This extends the orbit raising period from several weeks to over half a year. This issue of requiring additional time to arrive on station can be mitigated by increasing the power available for electric propulsion during the orbit-raising period. If a spacecraft was able to deliver additional solar array power during this orbit raising period to the orbit-raising thruster, it could shorten this period by as much as 40%. That improvement would enable in-service operation months ahead of time. Cubic Aerospaces HPPT design enables the utilization of additional BOL solar power for electric propulsion, reducing the transfer orbit time required.