In the past years the market for electric propulsion on the sattelite market has evolved towards the use of many smaller low flying sattelites, the mega constellation market. This market is dominated by several international active service providers (mainly active in US or in relation to US such as Starlink, OneWeb ...)
European providers of EP solutions are confronted with a strong competition together with a massive decline of the traditional GEO market forcing them to go in the field of the large number constellation with very strong economic challenges.
Also the technology of EP is strategically important for Europe to have acces to high performance spacecraft services, as it got evident by the ukrainian crysis. A good example is given by Star link demonstrating the potential of having a telekomunication constellation under own controll to be able to spawn telecomunication services very quickly in particular in a crysis situation.
Finally the main source of EP engines, the russian company Fakel, practically got unavailable on the market rendering many planned mega constellations impossible to be implemented as planned.
All of this underlines the importance of having independant European sources of EP technology ready to deliver large quantities at competitive cost.
The HEMPT-NG2 project adresses this problem.
HEMPT is a key-candidate to overcome all the currently identified deficiencies of the existing EPS solutions
The HEMPT-NG2 project addresses the topic SPACE-28-TEC-2020 on Incremental Technologies which is part of the SRC - In-Space electrical propulsion and station keeping. It continues the predecessor HEMPT-NG. It will contribute to the principal target of the EPIC roadmap “to increase the competitiveness of the EP systems developed in Europe” by developing an integrated solution based on HEMPT (Highly Efficient Multistage Plasma Thruster) for the thruster, the fluidic management system, and the power processing unit.
The final products consist of modular elements, which can be put together to an Electric Propulsion System (EPS) ideally suited to the specific needs for LEO applications with an accessible power range of 200W to 700 W. The thruster module is capable of dual-optimized mode operations allowing orbit raising and station keeping with the same EPS or to select prior launch an ideal working point for the specific mission.
The HEMPT technology used in this project offers unique features compared to other EP technologies, namely higher lifetimes of the thrusters, drastic reduction of propellant consumption and minimal complexity of the principal technological concept providing an excellent basis for economic competitiveness
HEMPT-NG2 main mbjective was to finalize the already developed EP components and to quallify them such they can be sold on the constellation market. This was achieved.
In Detail the Objectives for this project were to support the more promising technologies developed in Phase 1 towards higher TRLs and taking into account the optimization of the recurring costs during the design phase in order, at the end of the Phase 2, to achieve the SRC expectations:
1. to be ready to be chosen for a potential IOD/IOV, and
2. to allow the developed EPS products to become competitive on the electric propulsion market at world level within the 2020-2030 timeframe.
