Effectiveness Of Gas-liquid Equilibrium Thruster For Nano Satellite
- Paper number
IAC-07-B4.5.05
- 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
- Coauthor
Dr. Junichiro Kawaguchi, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA)/ISAS, Japan
- Year
2007
- Abstract
The gas-liquid equilibrium thruster stores fuel mainly as liquid phase in the tank and eject fuel as gas phase using only the power by the vapor pressure. Compared with conventional thrusters, thrust level of the gas-liquid equilibrium thruster is low. But the system configuration of the gas-liquid equilibrium thruster is simple because it doesn’t need the elements like combustor or high pressure reservoir and so on. And its weight of the system is lighter than that of other thruster. As fuel of this thruster, we can choose the one that has less toxicity and is easily available from many kinds of fuel. These characters mean the handling of the gas-liquid equilibrium thruster is easy. It is expected that the gas-liquid equilibrium thruster performs as the actuator for the attitude control and orbital maneuver for nano satellites. Last year, the small solar sail satellite, 6kg-size satellite, was launched as sub payload of M-V rocket together with “HINODE” satellite. This satellite equipped with the gas-liquid equilibrium thruster. And one of its missions was to confirm the performance of the gas-liquid equilibrium thruster. It is confirmed indirectly that the gas-liquid thruster worked well, but unfortunately we couldn’t get the enough data required because of communication error. In this study, to improve the precision of the gas-liquid equilibrium thruster, several kinds of experiments as for the effectiveness are achieved. And it aims for onboard experiment on the actual small satellite. When the gas-liquid equilibrium thruster ejects the fuel, if the mist ejection has occurred, the fuel consumption rate increased and the thruster performance decreased. To achieve that the thruster ejects only gas phase, it is needed to certainly separate gas-liquid phase. This means that it is important that the liquid fuel remains in the tank and the heater efficiently achieves the heat control to compensate the evaporation heat. At first, it is experimented the mechanism to remain liquid fuel in the tank. This mechanism also expected the decrease of the sloshing. And next, the effective heater control is experimented within the limited resources. It is enable the heat control to utilize the liquid fuel remaining mechanism. It is also measured the thruster performance like thrust level depending on the temperature. From these experiments, the effectiveness of the gas-liquid equilibrium thruster is summarized. And the accomplishments of this study would be applied to the next small satellite that demonstrates the solar sail mission.
- Abstract document