David Krejci, ENPULSION
Alexander Reissner, ENPULSION
David Krejci, Dr., ENPULSION
The first flight ever flight of a Field emission electric propulsion (FEEP) thruster occurred in 2018 using a ENPULSION NANO thruster. Since then, more than 200 heritage ENPULSION NANO systems, 20 higher power MICRO systems and 25 novel NANO R3/AR3 systems have been launched. FEEP propulsion systems are based on passively fed, Indium based liquid metal FEEP technology based on liquid metal ion source heritage developed at Fotec. In these systems, thrust is generated through electrostatic acceleration of ions extracted from a liquid propellant by suspending the liquified metal propellant in porous, sharp emitter features. This emitter including propellant are then biased to high voltage with respect to a counter electrode called extractor to induce a Taylor cone, leading to ion emission at the apex of the Taylor cone. To increase thrust, 28 emission sites are arranged in a characteristic crown shaped emitter geometry for the NANO thrusters, achieving thrust levels in the order of 350uN. To increase thrust levels, 4 of these emitter crowns are operated in parallel in the MICRO thruster, allowing thrust levels at nominal 1mN. Depending on emitter and extractor voltage settings, propulsion systems can be operated in a specific impulse range from approx. 1000s to beyond 4000s. This work provides a statistical overview of available onorbit data by expanding the flight heritage description to the new propulsion system generations and presenting lessons learnt from onorbit operations. Based on these learnings we will provide a status update of the different products of NANO, NANO R3/AR3 and MICRO thruster.