Interstellar heliopause probe
- There is common agreement within the scientific community that in order to understand our local galactic environment it will be necessary to send a spacecraft into the region beyond the solar wind termination shock. Considering distances of 200 AU for a new mission, one needs a spacecraft traveling at a speed of close to 10 AU/yr in order to keep the mission duration in the range of less than 25 yrs, a transfer time postulated by European Space Agency (ESA). Two propulsion options for the mission have been proposed and discussed so far: the solar sail propulsion and the ballistic/radioisotope-electric propulsion (REP). As a further alternative, we here investigate a combination of solar-electric propulsion (SEP) and REP. The SEP stage consists of six 22-cms diameter RIT-22 ion thrusters working with a high specific impulse of 7377 s corresponding to a positive grid voltage of 5 kV. Solar power of 53 kW at begin of mission (BOM) is provided by a lightweight solar array.
Author: | Horst Wolfgang Loeb, Karl-Heinz Schartner, Bernd DachwaldORCiD, Andreas Ohndorf, Wolfgang Seboldt |
---|---|
Parent Title (Russian): | Труды МАИ |
Publisher: | Moskauer Staatliches Luftfahrtinstitut (МАИ) |
Place of publication: | Moskau |
Document Type: | Article |
Language: | English |
Year of Completion: | 2012 |
Issue: | 60 |
First Page: | 2 |
Last Page: | 2 |
Link: | https://trudymai.ru/eng/published.php?ID=35089&referer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F |
Zugriffsart: | weltweit |
Institutes: | FH Aachen / Fachbereich Luft- und Raumfahrttechnik |
FH Aachen / IfB - Institut für Bioengineering | |
collections: | Verlag / Moskauer Staatliches Luftfahrtinstitut (МАИ) |