The world's most powerful electric propulsion engine

The 12-kilowatt Advanced Electric Propulsion System (AEPS) will be used on NASA's future lunar space station.

AEPS engine tested in a vacuum chamber. Photo: NASA — AEPS engine tested in a vacuum chamber. Photo: *NASA*

NASA and aerospace company Aerojet Rocketdyne have completed successful qualification testing of the Advanced Electric Propulsion System (AEPS), a 12-kilowatt solar electric thruster (SEP) designed for long-duration missions to the Moon and beyond. The AEPS is described as the most powerful electric propulsion engine (also known as an ion thruster) ever built, Space reported on November 9. The 12 kilowatts of power is enough to power more than 1,330 LED lights. NASA previously announced the start of qualification testing in July.

"AEPS is truly next-generation technology," said Clayton Kachele, AEPS project manager at NASA's Glenn Research Center. "Current electric propulsion systems are about 4.5 kilowatts. Here, we've significantly increased the power in a single thruster. That opens up new possibilities for future space exploration . AEPS will take us faster and farther."

The blue exhaust plume from AEPS during qualification testing is created from ionized xenon gas, giving rise to the name ion thrusters. While conventional chemical propulsion systems use liquid propellants to produce a short but powerful burst of energy that propels a spacecraft in a desired direction, electric propulsion uses inert gas propellants, which provide less energy but last much longer, resulting in higher efficiency, which could be useful for long-duration missions in space.

The goal is to deploy AEPS on NASA’s upcoming Gateway space station by placing three AEPS thrusters on the station’s Power and Propulsion Unit, which will serve multiple purposes including maintaining Gateway’s orbit around the Moon, providing high-speed communications with Earth, and providing power to the entire station. Scheduled to launch in 2025, Gateway is a collaborative project with multiple commercial and international partners. It is an essential part of NASA’s Artemis missions to the lunar south pole over the next few years. AEPS also has potential for use in deep space missions.

While AEPS is a solar electric engine, another type of electric propulsion being explored is nuclear electric propulsion (NEP), which uses a nuclear reactor to provide thrust. The AEPS project is not the first time NASA has used electric propulsion for a deep space mission. NASA’s Dawn mission to the dwarf planets Ceres and Vesta was the first mission to use an ion propulsion system. Most recently, NASA’s Psyche mission successfully launched on October 13, using solar electric propulsion to make a 3.6 billion km journey to the asteroid 16 Psyche.

An Khang (According to Space )

Source link