As part of the development of projects to conquer deep space, the aerospace agency NASA allocated $ 67 million and signed a 36-month contract for the development and construction of the Advanced Electric Propulsion System (AEPS) with the private aerospace company Aerojet Rocketdyne, located in the American city of Redmond (Washington state).
As part of this development, based on previous prototypes of ion acceleration systems used in the NEXT and Dawn space missions, a more advanced propulsion system will be created, which one day may be used in manned missions to Mars.
According to the signed contract, Aerojet Rocketdyne will work with NASA engineers from the John Glenn Research Center, as well as the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and will develop a new propulsion system that will include an ion accelerator, a control system, and a controller for a low-density xenon gas flow control system., as well as various attachments of electronic equipment. The necessary energy for the engine will be generated by a high-tech solar array.
NASA notes that this agreement is the last step on the path of the space agency to start the Solar Electric Propulsion (SEP) project. By replacing chemical jets with ion accelerators, which use electrons trapped within magnetic fields to ionize molecules of xenon gas and create propulsion, NASA hopes to increase the efficiency of current electric propulsion systems by a factor of 100.
If the program proves to be successful, NASA hopes that advanced acceleration systems will enter use in the mid-2020s and will be used in both commercial and government programs to conquer deep space, as well as be used as additional systems in programs such as Asteroid Redirect. Mission (ARM), and flights to Mars. The mission of Aerojet Rocketdyne is to build, test and further improve ready-to-use ion accelerators, the first four of which will be built by the company itself under the signed agreement.
“Under the contract, NASA will develop high-tech elements for electrical propulsion systems for initial space missions. It is planned to demonstrate this technology in real space conditions by the end of the decade,”says Steve Zeschuk, head of NASA's space technology development projects.
"The development of these technologies will open up tremendous space transportation opportunities for NASA in the future, opening the door for manned and robotic missions to deep space, and will also make a huge contribution to the development of the private space sector."
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