June 2024
·
46 Reads
Since the first flight of a Field emission electric propulsion (FEEP) thruster in 2018, more than 200 FEEP based propulsion systems have been launched, including 190 heritage ENPULSION NANO systems, 18 higher power MICRO systems and 9 novel NANO R 3 /AR 3. The latter are the successor products of the heritage NANO, with the AR 3 version allowing for direct thrust vectoring capability without moving parts. All propulsion systems reported in this work are based on passively fed, Indium based liquid metal FEEP technology. This work reports the latest launch and flight heritage statistics. We present telemetry of different propulsion systems used in different applications and orbits, and present the successful on orbit extractor cleaning procedure conducted after 1350 hours of accumulated firing on a heritage NANO thruster in LEO. Nomenclature FEEP = Field emission electric propulsion GEO = Geostationary orbit IOD = In orbit demonstration LEO = Low earth orbit 1 Chief Science Officer, ENPULSION, david.krejci@enpulsion.com.