A design study was performed to investigate packaging and deployment options for the potassium—Rankine, nuclear electric propulsion (NEP) spacecraft described by Rovang (1992). The subject spacecraft is the cargo portion of a split‐sprint (cargo/piloted) Mars mission, carrying 144 mt of cargo. Two parallel SP‐100 type reactors, potassium—Rankine power conversion assemblies, and argon ion thrusters are utilized in the selected architecture. A spacecraft design and deployment approach which uses two heavy lift launch vehicles (HLLV) to insert the entire spacecraft into low Earth orbit is presented.
Packaging and deployment of a 5.5 MWe potassium—Rankine nuclear electric propulsion spacecraft
10th SymposiumùSpace Nuclear Power and Propulsion ; 1993 ; Albuquerque, NM, USA
AIP Conference Proceedings ; 271 , 3 ; 1203-1208
20.01.1993
6 pages
Aufsatz (Konferenz)
Elektronische Ressource
Englisch