Powered Flight of Electron Cyclotron Resonance Ion Engines on Hayabusa Explorer
By H. Kuninaka, K. Nishiyama, I. Funaki, Tetsuya Yamada, Y. Shimizu, J. Kawaguchi. 2007
152 citations recorded by the source corpus.
The electron cyclotron resonance ion engine has long life and high reliability because of electrodeless plasma generation in both the ion generator and the neutralizer. Four μ10s, each generating a thrust of 8 mN, specific impulse of 3200 s, and consuming 350 W of electric power, propelled the Hayabusa asteroid explorer launched on May 2003. After vacuum exposure and several baking runs to reduce residual gas, the ion engine system established continuous acceleration. Electric propelled delta-V Earth gravity assist, a new orbit change scheme that uses electric propulsion with a high specific impulse was applied to change from a terrestrial orbit to an asteroid-based orbit. In 2005, Hayabusa, using solar electric propulsion, managed to successfully cover the solar distance between 0.86 and 1.7 AU. It rendezvoused with, landed on, and lifted off from the asteroid Itokawa. During the 2-year flight, the ion engine system generated a delta-V of 1400 m/s while consuming 22 kg of xenon propellant and operating for 25,800 h.
Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/97b5e40c683e08c895ede7838183b65a1659d957
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In Astronomy and Astrophysics
Citations in the corpus
- Electric propulsion for satellites and spacecraft: established technologies and novel approaches (2016, methodology): “45 GHz have been employed as the main propulsion system for the Hayabusa spacecraft [67, 68].”