High Power Electric Propulsion: MARS plus EUROPA – Already Beyond 2025!

It’s mid-term realization plus global strategic investments: the results of the European Russian DEMOCRITOS project (Horizon 2020) related to the MW class INPPS (International Nuclear Power and Propulsion System) flagship will be described. INPPS flagship includes high power electric thrusters cluster, supplied electric power by the nuclear reactor (successfully tested in Russia) and a solar power ring. Two INPPS versions were studied – the wide and arrow wing versions. Both versions have a futuristic design with standardized interfaces for several flagship subsystems. Especially the high payload mass of INPPS allows the transport of – for example – up to 12 t to JUPITER moon EUROPA and about 18 t to MARS – as a function of specific impulse of electric thrusters. INPPS flagship not only allows scientific, but especially commercial and communication payloads as well. This means industrial-scale production of space flight systems for robotic and human space exploration. International cooperation related to INPPS realization are necessary within an International High Power Space Transportation program to realize the DEMOCRITOS core, ground and space components until 2025. DEMOCRITOS project included partners from Europe, Russia and a Brazilian guest observer and received several inputs from NASA Cleveland and JAXA Tokyo

Democritos: preparing demonstrators for high power nuclear electric space propulsion

The Democritos project aims at preparing demonstrators for a megawatt class nuclearelectric space propulsion. It is funded by Horizon 2020, the R&T program of the European Community. It is a new European and Russian project, including as partners: Nuclear National Laboratory (U.K.), DLR (Germany), The Keldysh Research Center (Russia), Thales Alenia Space Italia (Italy), Snecma (France), ESF (France) and CNES (France). IEAV (Brazil) will join as an observer. Democritos is the follow-up of the Megahit project (www.megahit-eu.org). During Megahit project, a reference architecture was established for 1MWe nuclear electric propulsion INPPS (International Nuclear Propulsion and Power System) , and a roadmap was proposed to have a spacecraft available by the early 30's. The main aim of Democritos is to start implementing the Megahit roadmaps by preparing demonstrators for some of the necessary technologies. Democritos features a technical part, with preliminary design of the demonstrators and their test benches. It features also a programmatic part, which will deal with financial and organizational aspects of such an endeavour: the ambition of the project is to initiate or join international cooperations, as broad as possible, which will lead to the implementation of the demonstrators

DEMOCRITOS Demonstrators for Realization of Nuclear Electric Propulsion of the European Roadmaps MEGAHIT & DiPoP

The European Commission Horizon 2020 funded DEMOCRITOS project (2015-2017) will be primary focused to prepare preliminary design of the ground, core and space demonstrators and their test benches for the mega-watt class nuclear electric space propulsion INPPS flagship (International Nuclear Power and Propulsion System). In addition programmatic, organizational and funding aspects for international cooperation related to INPPS realization are sketched. The new project includes partners from Europe, Russia and the Brazilian guest observer IEAv and is the follow-up of the mega-watt class nuclear electric propulsion European-Russian MEGAHIT project (www.megahit-eu.org). In Europe was already established the high power nuclear MEGAHIT and the low power nuclear (20 to 200 kW NEP) DiPoP (www.DiPoP.eu) roadmaps. Because Europe has started the implementations for INPPS flagship in the 2030-2040 timeframe, both roadmaps will be also described – from MEGAHIT the INPPS technology options, the launcher, assembly and system architecture, space mission requirements, communications and public support. In case of DiPoP it will be explained the survey of European capabilities, technical options, potential space missions and the public acceptance as well

Le concept de filiere : un outil pour la recherche

Available at INIST (FR), Document Supply Service, under shelf-number : 26414, issue : a.1997 n.24 / INIST-CNRS - Institut de l'Information Scientifique et TechniqueSIGLEFRFranc