Progress On Colloid Micro-Thruster Research and Flight Testing

Electric propulsion devices are know for their high specific impulses, which makes them very appealing to space mission requiring ultimate utilization of the limited resources on board the spacecraft. Advances in microelectronics have allowed increased functionality while reducing the sizes of the spacecraft. However this has not been entirely true for propulsion units. Colloid Micro-Thruster held the promise for microand nanosatellite propulsion application because of their size, low cost, integrated package, high efficiency, and custom configurability to fit a specific application. This paper outlines the renewed research efforts on Colloid Thruster, in an attempt to understand the underlying principles and to uncover its true potential. A one-nozzle and a IOO-nozzle prototype have been built and tested. A flight thruster subsystem is under development for proof-of-concept flight testing on board a 15-kg university nanosatellite project called Emerald

The Design and Test of a Compact Propulsion System for CanX Nanosatellite Formation Flying

The NANOsatellite Propulsion System (NANOPS) is part of the CanX-2 (Canadian Advanced Nanospace eXperiement 2) mission to demonstrate enabling component technologies in support of future formation flying missions. Flight test results in 2006 from NANOPS on board CanX-2 will augment ground test results with the goal of refining the design to support the CanX-4 / CanX-5 formation flying mission in 2008. The CanX-2 NANOPS uses liquefied sulfur hexaflouride (SF6) as a propellant because of its high storage density. The target performance goals are 50 mN of thrust, a specific impulse of 45s. and a minimum impulse bit of 0.0005Ns. The CanX-2 experiement will mainly involve attitude control maneuvers in order to evaluate the performance of the propulsion system through on-board attitude sensors. NANOPS is novel not only because it is the first of its kind in microsatellites based on commercial off-the-shelf components. This paper describes the development metholdology as well as the ground-based and space-based testing involved during the development of NANOPS, and its suitability for future missions

Nanosatellite Tracking Ships: From Concept To Launch In 7 Months

The Space Flight Laboratory (SFL) at the University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies and COM DEV Ltd have developed a low Earth orbit nanosatellite in less than seven months to perform rapid turnaround experiments in space to detect and study Automatic Indentification System (AIS) signals transmitted by maritime vessels. The satellite, known as Nanosatellite Tracking Ships (NTS) leverages both SFL\u27s CanX-2 nanosatellite technology and Generic Nanosatellite Bus (GNB) mechanical design to house a custom AIS receiver payload developed by COM DEV Ltd. NTS was developed under an extremely tight schedule, with on-orbit results required within a year from contract start. NTS have successfully met all of its mission objectives and continues to operate in orbit. This paper outlines how SFL and COM DEV were able to rapidly design, construct and deploy a custom satellite to respond to the opportunity to bring on-orbit AIS detection services to the international community. This paper also provides an overview of the on-orbit data collected thus far outlining the capability of the spacecraft

An Experimental Mission in Robust Distributed Space Systems

Abstract. Distributed space systems are often cited as a means of enabling vast performance increases ranging from enhanced mission capabilities to radical reductions in operations cost. To explore thi

EMERALD: A Low-Cost Spacecraft Mission for Validating Formation Flying Technologies

Abstract- Spacecraft formation flying is a proposed technology with vast performance implications ranging from enhanced mission capabilities to radical reductions in operations cost. To explore this concept and to enable it