This paper presents early design of the Thruster pointing Mechanism (TPM-250) for electric propulsion thrusters for nanosats. The work described in the paper covers the most critical requirements, trade-off and design description, along with plans for the future development. Project will continue until the development and the acceptance of the Thruster Pointing Mechanism Flight Model for the ESA M-Argo mission. A breadboard and an engineering model will be built during 2022, including the control electronics, allowing us to reach TRL 6 towards the end of 2022 or early 2023. AVS is a worldwide leader in the development of complex instrumentation for Science and Space applications. The background of AVS in vacuum engineering, high -precision mechanisms and mechatronic systems has led us to become one of the only few specialized and EN9100 approved Space mechanisms suppliers in Europe. AVS and its subsidiary URA Thrusters are also one of the most active players in the in-space propulsion field, and will use this specific development as the stepping stone to develop a wide variety of TPM products for a wide set of missions, platforms and application, from nano or micro-satellites, to large GEO spacecraft. In particular with the M-ARGO' TPM, the system design is challenging due to the typical nanosatellite volume (in this case half 1U), power, and mass constrains. At the same time the requirement to fit the tubing and harness inside (particularly possible connectors from thrusters) is limiting space inside the allowable volume. Likewise, it is creating additional resistive torque terms, which are quite difficult to assess at initial stage without testing.


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    Title :

    Engineering Design of a Thruster-pointing Mechanism (TPM-250) for Deep Space and IOS Nanosats


    Contributors:


    Publication date :

    2022-03-05


    Size :

    3268880 byte




    Type of media :

    Conference paper


    Type of material :

    Electronic Resource


    Language :

    English