Design and In-orbit Demonstration of REGULUS, an Iodine electric propulsion system
Nicolas Bellomo, Mirko Magarotto, Marco Manente, Fabio Trezzolani, Riccardo Mantellato, Lorenzo Cappellini, Devis Paulon, A. Selmo, Davide Scalzi, Marco Minute, Matteo Duzzi, Alessandro Barbato, Alessandro Schiavon, Simone Di Fede, Nabil Souhair, Paola De Carlo, Francesco Barato, Fabiana Milza, Elena Toson, Daniele Pavarin
Abstract
Abstract REGULUS is an Iodine-based electric propulsion system. It has been designed and manufactured at the Italian company Technology for Propulsion and Innovation SpA (T4i). REGULUS integrates the Magnetically Enhanced Plasma Thruster (MEPT) and its subsystems, namely electronics, fluidic, and thermo-structural in a volume of 1.5 U. The mass envelope is 2.5 kg, including propellant. REGULUS targets CubeSat platforms larger than 6 U and CubeSat carriers. A thrust T = 0.60 mN and a specific impulse I sp = 600 s are achieved with an input power of P = 50 W; the nominal total impulse is I tot = 3000 Ns. REGULUS has been integrated on-board of the UniSat-7 satellite and its In-orbit Demonstration (IoD) is currently ongoing. The principal topics addressed in this work are: (i) design of REGULUS, (ii) comparison of the propulsive performance obtained operating the MEPT with different propellants, namely Xenon and Iodine, (iii) qualification and acceptance tests, (iv) plume analysis, (v) the IoD.