New Mars Forums

SpaceNut

Administrator

From: New Hampshire

Registered: 2004-07-22

Posts: 29,431

NASA eyes ion engines for Mars orbiter launching in 2022

NASA eyes ion engines for Mars orbiter launching in 2022

Engineers also want to add ion engines to the orbiter and fly the efficient electrically-powered thruster system to Mars for the first time, testing out a solar-electric propulsion package that officials say will be needed when astronauts visit the red planet.

Ion engines produce just a whisper of thrust, using electric power to ionize atoms of a neutral gas and spit out the particles at high speed. While the drive given by the thrusters is barely noticeable in one instant, they can operate for months or years, burning scant fuel compared to traditional chemical rockets.

GW Johnson

Member

From: McGregor, Texas USA

Registered: 2011-12-04

Posts: 5,801

Website

Re: NASA eyes ion engines for Mars orbiter launching in 2022

From what little I have read and understood,  didn't the Dawn probe to Vesta and Ceres have ion thrusters?  And the ESA probe with its lander on the comet?  And the JAXA probe Hayabusa?  I think all of those were solar electric plus conventional propulsion,  were they not?

If it works on missions of 7 years to a decade or more to bodies like that,  why the hell would it not work going to Mars?  The only reason it hasn't already been done is that nobody thought they needed it for Mars. 

But I think that's wrong. 

SEP sends cargo to Mars orbit from Earth orbit just fine.  SEP plus conventional sends men (use the SEP to cut transit times).  You'll need a lander,  you'll need artificial gravity-by-spin to stay healthy,  and you'll need a lot of packed supplies since closed life support is just simply not ready (and likely still won't be if we go between 2025 and 2035).   You'll need a solar flare shelter,  use some of the packed supplies and propellant for that.  Given that you will be sending a lot of mass anyway,  there's simply no excuse for a cramped habitat for the crew.

The surface supplies and landers and landing propellant supplies can all be sent unmanned separately,  and slowly.  All you need for the manned part is an orbit to orbit transport,  with as reduced a transit time as we can build. 

While figuring out how to piece all this together into a real design proposal,  you do need to remember one thing as of supreme importance:  there is nothing as expensive as a dead crew.  Applies to civilian/private efforts as much as to government agency efforts. 

The second thing to remember is that there will likely be one and only one government-funded trip to Mars.  You'd better leave a functional base on that very first trip.  Otherwise,  it will be decade upon decade before any private outfit returns. 

GW

Last edited by GW Johnson (2015-03-06 13:14:22)

---

GW Johnson
McGregor,  Texas

"There is nothing as expensive as a dead crew,  especially one dead from a bad management decision"

SpaceNut

Administrator

From: New Hampshire

Registered: 2004-07-22

Posts: 29,431

Re: NASA eyes ion engines for Mars orbiter launching in 2022

NASA will launch a telecommunications orbiter to the red planet in 2022 to follow the sample-caching Mars 2020 rover and replace the aging Odyssey craft

A telecommunications orbiter, to launch to Mars in 2022, would replace the 13 year-old Mars Odyssey (pictured here) as the main communications relay for landed missions, NASA"s new Mars czar, Jim Watzin, announced Feb. 24. Like Odyssey, the new probe would also carry scientific instruments.

This Mars 2022 orbiter may use experimental technologies such as high-power solar-electric propulsion or an optical communications package that could greatly improve transmission speed and capacity over radio frequency systems, said Jim Watzin, NASA’s Mars exploration program director.

https://spaceflightnow.com/2015/03/03/n … g-in-2022/

https://astronaut.com/nasa-eyes-new-mar … -for-2022/

GW Johnson

Member

From: McGregor, Texas USA

Registered: 2011-12-04

Posts: 5,801

Website

Re: NASA eyes ion engines for Mars orbiter launching in 2022

I'm thinking "high-power" solar electric propulsion means one of the newer panel designs with more watts per kilogram of hardware,  coupled with a bigger electric thruster of some significant-factor-larger thrust level.  Of course they can do it.  They should do it.

GW

---

GW Johnson
McGregor,  Texas

"There is nothing as expensive as a dead crew,  especially one dead from a bad management decision"

SpaceNut

Administrator

From: New Hampshire

Registered: 2004-07-22

Posts: 29,431

Re: NASA eyes ion engines for Mars orbiter launching in 2022

Seems like I am finding much of what we need long before it gets into building...
NASA's Next Mars Orbiter Is Being Planned for 2022 to help if not replace its current aging orbiting satellites.

The Next Mars Orbiter (NeMO, earlier known as the Mars 2022 orbiter) is a proposed NASA Mars communications satellite with high-resolution imaging payload and two solar-electric ion thrusters

SHARAD (Shallow Radar) looks for liquid or frozen water in the first few hundreds of feet (up to 1 kilometer) of Mars' crust. SHARAD probes the subsurface using radar waves within a 15- to 25-megahertz but we need higher to see deeper.

Perseverance Rover will peer beneath Mars' surface of Mars, RIMFAX can provide a highly detailed view of subsurface structures down to at least 30 feet (10 meters) underground.

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/?type=future

Seems the mission never got off the drawing board....

Mars_B4_Moon

Member

Registered: 2006-03-23

Posts: 9,776

Re: NASA eyes ion engines for Mars orbiter launching in 2022

Small spacecraft electric propulsion opens new deep space opportunities
https://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Smal … s_999.html
The path to the Moon, Mars, and beyond will require a fleet of spacecraft in many different shapes and sizes, including everything from massive rockets that produce millions of pounds of thrust to pioneering small electric propulsion thrusters that fit in the palm of your hand.

For decades, innovators at NASA's Glenn Research Center have been developing large, high-power electric propulsion (EP) systems that harness the power of the Sun to energize inert gases and turn them into extremely efficient thrust. Higher fuel efficiency means less propellant is needed, lowering launch costs while allowing spacecraft designers to reduce overall spacecraft weight to carry more payload mass, like technology demonstrations or more powerful scientific instruments.

The agency's primary EP efforts have centered on large exploration and science missions, like the 7-kilowatt (kW) NEXT-C gridded-ion system currently flying on the Double Asteroid Redirection Test mission and the 12-kW Advanced Electric Propulsion System used on the Power and Propulsion Element for NASA's lunar orbiting space station known as Gateway.

However, over the last five years, the Small Spacecraft Electric Propulsion (SSEP) project at NASA Glenn has been advancing high-performance sub-kilowatt (<1-kW) Hall-effect thruster and power processing technologies to enable smaller spacecraft. By utilizing smaller craft - those that could fit inside the trunk of your car versus being the size of your car - the agency opens more opportunities to conduct ambitious deep space missions at a fraction of the cost.

In collaboration with U.S. industry, SSEP has developed a lightweight thruster capable of propelling a small spacecraft from Earth to the Moon, Mars, and beyond - a step up from most existing low-power electric propulsion systems produced commercially for low-Earth orbit operations.

"Scaling down the size and power of Hall-effect thruster technologies, while retaining exceptional propulsive performance, has been a challenge," says Gabriel Benavides, the lead engineer with the SSEP project at NASA Glenn. "It's like asking a toy-sized car to drive across country with the same range and functionality of a full-sized passenger vehicle."

Mars_B4_Moon

Member

Registered: 2006-03-23

Posts: 9,776

Re: NASA eyes ion engines for Mars orbiter launching in 2022

Aerojet Rocketdyne demonstrates electric propulsion capabilities for future deep space missions
https://www.spaceflightinsider.com/orga … -missions/

older 2021 article

New iodine-based plasma thruster tested in orbit
https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/11 … -in-orbit/

Iodine doesn't need a high-pressure propellant tank, as it can be stored as a solid.

Another newmars thread
'Nuclear Ion Propulsion'
https://newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=7182

SpaceNut

Administrator

From: New Hampshire

Registered: 2004-07-22

Posts: 29,431

Re: NASA eyes ion engines for Mars orbiter launching in 2022

So, no actual news on the name of the orbiter or when it's going to launch?

Mars_B4_Moon

Member

Registered: 2006-03-23

Posts: 9,776

Re: NASA eyes ion engines for Mars orbiter launching in 2022

Neumann Space Achieves Milestone with First Molybdenum-Fueled Thruster Test in Space
https://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Neum … e_999.html
Neumann Space, an Australian-based innovator in space technology, has recently made headlines with the successful completion of the first series of on-orbit tests of its Neumann Drive, a leading propulsion system designed for small spacecraft. This significant achievement marks Neumann Space as the first commercial entity to fire a thruster in space that utilizes Molybdenum, a solid metallic propellant, showcasing a novel use of a safe, storable, and abundant material for electric propulsion.

an update on info from the Next Mars Orbiter 2023? NeMO 2024, earlier known as the Mars 2022 orbiter a proposed NASA Mars communications satellite. I think the Orbiter was perhaps going to give support to the Mars Sample Return which was once an international mission but now has seen increased spending and has faced costly delays.

pdf
https://archive.fo/ZOCi2

'NASA Eyes Sample-Return Capability for Post-2020 Mars Orbiter'
https://web.archive.org/web/20170831232 … ?nid=23546

2018
https://spaceflightnow.com/2018/04/09/n … er-decade/