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WASHINGTON – Launch of Electric Satellite Propulsion Apollo Fusion expands its product range with an agreement with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, giving it access to state-of-the-art Hall thruster technology.
On May 7, the Silicon Valley-based company announced it has signed an agreement granting it an exclusive worldwide commercial license for JPL's Magnetic Shielded Miniature Hall Booster Technology, or MaSMi, as well as a contract to provide JPL three thrusters using this technology. .
Apollo Fusion plans to use MaSMi technology in an electric propellant called the Apollo Xenon Engine (AX), which will offer higher performance than the existing electric thrusters that the company has developed.
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Mike Cassidy, general manager of Apollo Fusion, said in an interview that one of the main advantages of MaSMi is its use of a magnetic shield to protect the plasma components generated by the propeller. "It uses magnetic field lines to prevent the plasma inside a propeller Hall from eroding the inside of the propeller," he said.
This erosion limits the life of a conventional Hall thruster to about 200,000 Newton-seconds of impulse. The magnetic shielding allows the thruster to last much longer: Cassidy estimated that its impulse would be up to 10 times higher.
Apollo Fusion plans to commercialize this technology and market it, including making "design-to-manufacture" changes that reduce the use of exotic materials and long lead time components. This reflects the difference in demand anticipated by the company. "Many JPL missions could build one or two probes, while for some of our customers it could be hundreds of satellites," he said.
The company will deliver the three thrusters to JPL this summer, mainly for ground tests, although Mr Cassidy has stated that one of the thrusters could be used on a future spacecraft. He added that the company would begin commercial production of AX thrusters early in 2020.
AX will provide superior thrust and performance over the company's existing Apollo Constellation (ACE) engine, with 1,000 watts of power and 55 milliseconds, versus 400 watts and a 24 millisecond boost for ACE. However, Cassidy said the two thrusters will be complementary.
"The 400 watt and kilowatt thrusters are attracting a lot of interest," he said. AX, he said, will likely be of interest to those developing high-power satellites, including the GEO all-electric satellites, that want superior performance to reduce transit time to their final geostationary orbit. . A single AX thruster, he says, is lighter than two or three smaller ACE thrusters.
Apollo Fusion still sees the interest for ACE companies developing smaller satellites in low Earth orbit. This propeller has not yet flown in space, but Cassidy said that one of them will fly during the second half of the year on a specially designed cubesat mission. to test it.
Cassidy added that the JPL agreement has an added benefit for the company. "Many of our business customers have responded very well to us," he said. "They said," Wow, JPL chose you to do that. It's impressive. "
This story was provided by SpaceNews, dedicated to cover all aspects of the space industry.
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