[Via Satellite 12-31-2015] European Space Propulsion<\/b> (ESP), a subsidiary of Aerojet Rocketdyne Holdings<\/b>, successfully completed testing of a five-kilowatt Hall Thruster with a Power Processing Unit (PPU) supplied by Thales Alenia Space<\/b> in Belgium. The test program was successfully conducted in the United Kingdom, and marks the first time a flight-proven five-kilowatt class Hall Thruster has been tested with a European-manufactured PPU.<\/p>\n
ESP, a UK-registered company located in Belfast focused on providing in-space chemical and electric propulsion products for the European space market, was awarded a contract valued at approximately 11 million euros from the European Space Agency<\/b> (ESA) in March 2015 for the flight qualification of the five-kilowatt XR-5E Hall Thruster, under the ESA Advanced Research in Telecommunications Systems (ARTES) initiative, with targeted application on telecommunication satellites.<\/p>\n
ESP is in the process of transferring production capability of the XR-5 thruster, the only flight-proven five-kilowatt Hall Effect Thruster, from parent company Aerojet Rocketdyne. ESP will develop the XR-5E, building upon the proven satellite integration experience and extensive flight heritage of the XR\u20115 product line. The program includes establishment of a lower-cost electric propulsion design, manufacturing and testing capability that takes advantage of the strong Northern Ireland engineering and business environment. ESP is also developing a new Thermo-Throttle based Xenon Flow Controller (XFC) that will be combined with the Belfast-built thruster to provide a strong offering into the expanding European market. The completion of the PPU coupling test with the XR-5 is the first major milestone to be completed under the ARTES program.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
[Via Satellite 12-31-2015] European Space Propulsion (ESP), a subsidiary of Aerojet Rocketdyne Holdings, successfully completed testing of a five-kilowatt Hall Thruster with a Power Processing Unit (PPU) supplied by Thales Alenia Space in Belgium. The test program was successfully conducted in the United Kingdom, and marks the first time a flight-proven five-kilowatt class Hall Thruster […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":72302,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-72301","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72301"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72301"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72301\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/72302"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}