The global space community is increasingly interested in planetary exploration of the Moon and Mars, near-Earth asteroid avoidance, mining and in-orbit service missions. In the CHEOPS-VHP-BB project, an international consortium consisting of seven partners – leading representatives of the space industry, research centres, universities and SMEs – is developing innovative technologies to enable future Mars, Moon and near-Earth asteroid avoidance missions. The main objective of this project is to design, develop and qualify future propulsion systems and simulation tools for this purpose, thus complementing ongoing development activities with research and development for the future use of very powerful hall thruster propulsion systems. The project takes a robust and cost-effective approach to qualification, the production of key components subject to wear and the possibility of using alternative propellants and energy sources. The cost-effective approach to qualification envisaged in this project requires the modelling of life-limiting wear processes for selected thruster components. In order to correlate wear with thruster operation, a comprehensive characterization of the thrusters in ground tests is required. For this task, the Advanced Electric Propulsion Diagnostic Platform developed at IOM in two previous ESA projects is used. To do this, beam diagnostic tools must first be adapted to the high thermal load under beam exposure from these very powerful Hall thrusters.

Link: www.cheops-vhp-bb.eu
 

Duration: 2023 – 2025
Funding (whole consortium): 1,499,853.00 Euro
Funding (IOM): 142,333.75 Euro
Funding programme: HORIZON-CL4-2022-SPACE-01
Coordination: Safran Spacecraft Propulsion, Frankreich

Consortium partners: 7

Contact:
Dr. Daniel Spemann
Field of research Tools
Phone: +49 (0)341 235-2681
E-Mail: daniel.spemann(a)iom-leipzig.de