The US will use a 12-kilowatt Advanced Electric Propulsion System (AEPS) on NASA's future lunar space station.
The AEPS engine is being tested in a vacuum chamber. Photo: NASA
NASA and aerospace company Aerojet Rocketdyne have successfully completed quality testing of the Advanced Electric Propulsion System (AEPS), a 12-kilowatt solar-electric propulsion (SEP) engine built for use in long-term missions such as flights to the Moon and beyond. The AEPS is described as the most powerful electric propulsion (or ion propulsion) engine ever produced, Space reported on November 9th. Its 12 kilowatts of power are enough to supply more than 1,330 LED lights. NASA previously announced the start of a series of quality tests in July.
"AEPS is truly a next-generation technology," said Clayton Kachele, AEPS project manager at NASA's Glenn Research Center. "Current electric propulsion systems have a power output of around 4.5 kilowatts. Here, we've significantly increased the power in a single propulsion engine. That capability opens up new opportunities for future space exploration . AEPS will allow us to fly faster and farther."
The blue exhaust plume from the AEPS during quality testing is created from ionized xenon gas, hence the name ion propulsion. While conventional chemical propulsion systems use liquid propellant to create a short but powerful burst of energy to propel a spacecraft in the desired direction, electric propulsion uses inert gas propellant, which provides less energy but a much longer runtime, resulting in higher efficiency and potential for long-duration space missions.
The goal is to utilize AEPS on NASA's upcoming Gateway space station by placing three AEPS propulsion units on the station's Power and Propulsion Unit, serving multiple purposes including maintaining Gateway's orbit around the Moon, high-speed communication with Earth, and powering the entire station. Scheduled for launch in 2025, Gateway is a collaborative project with numerous commercial and international partners. It is an essential component of NASA's Artemis missions to the lunar south pole in the coming years. Additionally, AEPS also has potential applications in deep space missions.
While AEPS is a solar-powered propulsion system, another type of electric propulsion system under research 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 deep space missions. NASA's Dawn missions to the dwarf planets Ceres and Vesta were the first to use ion propulsion systems. Most recently, NASA's Psyche mission, successfully launched on October 13th, used solar-powered propulsion to make its 3.6 billion km journey to asteroid 16 Psyche.
An Khang (According to Space )
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