High-Impulse, Scalable, Metal Plasma Thruster for Cubesat Missions

In PhII, AASC matured a Metal Plasma Thruster (MPT) to TRL6. This thruster (www.aasc.space) has no moving parts, uses solid metal propellant, a lt;45V Power Processor Unit and requires a DC power input of only 7.3V - 23V from the spacecraft and a start/stop command. The on-board processor controls the firing sequence of the pulsed thruster fornbsp;orbit raising/lowering or precisenbsp;attitude control. A flight-ready unit has been integrated into ASTRA LLCrsquo;s 12U CubeSat for USSFrsquo;s EWS Rapid Revisit Optical Cloud Imager Mission, scheduled for launch in early 2022. The MPT would achieve TRL8. The MPT has passed vibration tests and has been fired in vacuum at ~33W tonbsp;a total impulse of 2200Ns; the life test continues towards the design goal of 6000Ns for the 1.8kg (total) thruster.In this Project, AASC will: (1) make a scaled 4kg MPT for Artemis radiation tolerant for operation in deep space (assisted by space-qualified subcontractors with expertise); (2) make targeted redesigns of the MPTnbsp;to improve mass-production quality, manufacturing throughput and reliability; (3) build a small production cell in which to develop and document unit assembly that would ultimately enable scalable production through contract manufacturing to meet larger quantity orders; (4) validate objectives 1 and 2: (a) for radiation tolerance, through design of increased redundancy of critical components and simulation of radiation events and system response; (b) for performance reproducibility, through long duration operation of multiple units in vacuum with data gathered on operational figures of merit; (5)nbsp;verify protocols for reliable and reproducible manufacture, then deliver a flight-ready propulsion system for 12U missions in Lunar orbit with a manufacturing protocol that results in reproducible thrusters. If a constellation of N CubeSats is to fly in formation around the moon, our thrusters will be designed such that the Nth unit is close in performance to the first unit.