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.

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Metadaten
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
Date of the Publication (Server):2022/04/04
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)