NASA awards $67 million contract for deep space electric propulsion system

In its attempt to enable deep space exploration like a planned mission to Mars, NASA has partnered with Aerojet Rocketdyne to design and produce an advanced electric propulsion system, according to an announcement from the space agency.

Worth $67 million, the contract and the work conducted under it could possibly raise spaceflight transportation fuel efficiency by 10 times over present chemical propulsion technology and more than double thrust capability compared to existing electric propulsion systems.

“Through this contract, NASA will be developing advanced electric propulsion elements for initial spaceflight applications, which will pave the way for an advanced solar electric propulsion demonstration mission by the end of the decade,” said Steve Jurczyk, associate administrator of NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD) in Washington. “Development of this technology will advance our future in-space transportation capability for a variety of NASA deep space human and robotic exploration missions, as well as private commercial space missions.”

Developing a new paradigm

Aerojet Rocketdyne will manage the development and delivery of an integrated electrical propulsion program consisting of a thruster, strength processing model (PPU), lower-stress xenon movement controller, and electrical control. NASA has developed and tested a prototype thruster and PPU the company can use as a reference design.

The company will build, test and provide an engineering development unit for evaluation in planning for the next generation of flight units. In the option period of the contract, if exercised, Aerojet Rocketdyne will develop four integrated flight units, which the units that will actually go into space.

The project will directly coordinate the latest advanced solar array systems work. NASA said the electrical power from this advanced electric propulsion flight system in space will be created by solar arrays using structures comparable to those that were made via solar array systems contracts.

The space agency has increasingly trusted solar electric propulsion for long-term, deep-space robotic science and exploration missions to numerous destinations, including NASA’s Dawn mission that surveyed the giant asteroid Vesta and the protoplanet Ceres.

The advanced electric propulsion system is the next step in NASA’s Solar Electric Propulsion (SEP) project, which is creating technologies to increase the range and abilities of future science and exploration missions.

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Image credit: NASA

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