The European HiPER programme for Future High Power Electric Propulsion Technologies

Abstract

New propulsion technologies will be essential for t he performance enhancement and affordability improvements needed by next generation space missions. High Power Electric Propulsion could play a key role in space explorati on venture by enabling more affordable and sustainable space-to-space missions. HiPER is a 3-year collaborative project substantially funded by the European Union and under the coordination of Alta aimed at laying the technical and programmatic foundations for the development of innovative Electric Propulsion technologies - and of the relat ed power generation - to fulfill future space transportation and space exploration needs. The paper presents the proposed scenarios for High Power Electric Propulsion applications and the development status of the innovative technologies for future space exploration so far ad dressed in the programme. I. Introduction lectric Propulsion (EP) could play a very important role in future space exploration programmes by ena bling more affordable and sustainable space-to-space miss ions. Today’s state-of-the-art Electric Propulsion has achieved the capability to allow high efficiency “o ne shot” missions, such as those developed or under development for the European SMART-1, GOCE and Bepi Colombo spacecrafts, for the American Deep-Space 1 and DAWN, and for the Japanese Hayabusa 1-5 . What is needed next is the development of EP syst ems intended for the much larger payloads and re-use capability. Indeed, larg er payload applicability can be achieved by increas ing the operational power level of the propulsion systems. HiPER - High Power Electric propulsion: a Roadmap for the future - is a 3-year collaborative project substantially funded by the European Union aimed at laying the technical and programmatic foundations for the development of innovative EP technologies - and of the related power generation - to fulfill future sp ace transportation and space exploration needs. HiPER s tarted on October 2008 and involves 20 partners fro m 6 European Countries under the coordination of Alta. The project’s goal is very ambitious, since it not only addresses technologies, but also attempts to consider major t echnological efforts in the framework of social and political scenarios, both internal to Europe and with respect to non-European partners. The first two years of activities have been mainly devoted to select mission scenarios which could ben efit from the increase of the operational power level of Elec tric Propulsion systems and to initiate design and development activities of EP technologies and the related power generation. These development activities will be f inished during the last year of the programme. In the next paragra phs, both the application scenarios and the status of manufacturing, assembly and testing activities of t he technologies developed in HiPER programme will be presented.