Development and mission status report of gas-liquid equilibrium thruster for the small satellite
- Paper number
IAC-06-B5.5.06
- Author
Dr. Takayuki Yamamoto, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), Japan
- Coauthor
Dr. Osamu Mori, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), Japan
- Coauthor
Mr. Maki Shida, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), Japan
- Year
2006
- Abstract
In this late summer, the small satellite is going to be launched demonstrating the power generation by film solar cell of solar sail. This satellite is the 5kg-class satellite. In this satellite, the thruster system is required for two reasons. The first is the spin up for deployment of the sail using the inertial force. And the second is the orbital maneuver to raise the perigee altitude. In the small satellite, the thruster system has to be simple and light weight. There are some conventional thrusters like cold or hot gas thruster and ion engine. The cold gas thrusters have to endure the very high pressure, so the weight of the tank and pipeline become heavy. The hot gas thrusters burn the fuel and oxidizer. Generally these kinds of thrusters use hydrazine as for fuel, but hydrazine is so toxic that these thrusters require careful handling. And this system must have the reaction chamber, so it is difficult to be light and smaller. The ion engine shows good performance as for the energy efficiency, but its system is very complex and the required electric power is very high. Because of the above situation, the new thruster system has to be developed for the small satellite. In this paper, the gas-liquid equilibrium thruster is developed. This system uses LPG (Liquefied Petroleum Gas) as fuel, so it is easy to handle the system. And this thruster can bring the fuel as liquid in the tank and eject the fuel as gas using the gas liquid equilibrium pressure to produces the thrust, so the fuel tank only needs to resist the vapor pressure of the fuel and the system can be simplified. First, we show the fundamental performance and the feasibility of this gas-liquid equilibrium thruster. And then the early operation report as for RCS system could be presented. Recently, mission requirements for the small satellites are increasing. This means the small satellites are required not only testing small devices in orbit, but also satisfying some scientific needs. In these situations, the precise attitude control or the orbital maneuvers are required even for the small satellites. Here the gas-liquid equilibrium thrusters have the good possibility of the small satellites’ thruster system. And if this system would prove its performance in the actual small solar sail mission, this thruster system could be hopeful thruster widely used for the small satellites.
- Abstract document
- Manuscript document
IAC-06-B5.5.06.pdf (🔒 authorized access only).
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