U.S. begins to develop electric propulsion system for landing on Mars

NASA announced on the 19th that it will fund a US$67 million U.S. jet engine-rocket power company to develop an electric propulsion system for landing on Mars. The space agency wrote in a statement that day that this advanced electric propulsion system "will significantly advance the capabilities of commercial space in the United States and make deep space exploration missions possible, including in the NASA 'asteroid redirection mission'. Robot operation part, and its trip to Mars."

The statement said that the electric propulsion system will use solar energy as a power source, and its fuel efficiency has the potential to increase by 10 times than the existing chemical propulsion technology, and the propulsion capacity will be approximately twice that of the existing electric propulsion system.

According to the contract signed by both parties, the jet engine-rocket power company will develop subsystems such as thrusters and power processing units within 36 months and integrate them into an electric propulsion system. NASA has previously developed a prototype thruster and power handling unit that will be provided to the company as a reference.

According to the contract, Jet-Rocket Power will also develop a system for testing and evaluating the above-mentioned electric propulsion system.

NASA has developed electric propulsion systems for more than half a century. Its first successful ion thruster was introduced in the 1950s. Since then, deep space exploration missions in the United States have become increasingly dependent on electric propulsion systems. The most recent use of this system was the “Dawn” asteroid probe, which relied on an ion thruster to visit Vesta in 2011 and visited Ceres in 2015. Become the first unmanned probe to visit two celestial bodies in the solar system.

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