PET-100. Advance manufacturing processes development for mass production of electrospray thrusters for CubeSat constellations

先进的制造工艺对于空间推进部门关键部件的制造至关重要。在接下来的十年里，立方体卫星大小的航天器星座将需要高效的推进解决方案，同时要足够紧凑，以适应紧凑的体积，质量和功率限制。该项目旨在开发符合空间要求的制造和集成工艺，如陶瓷烧结或电子封装，以实现推进部件的大规模制造，以满足苛刻的要求。多孔电喷雾推进器（PET）是为数不多的适用于CubeSat姿态控制和轨道变化的电推进系统之一，但需要大量的制造开发投入才能准备好飞行。快速商业开发是必要的，以满足CubeSat到2023-24\年对300-500个单位的需求。目前，在TRL 4/5，PET-100已被证明具有高效率（62%），是其一些主要竞争对手的两倍多。然而，为了做好飞行准备，关键部件的生产技术必须允许使用空间合格工艺进行所需的大批量生产。我们将确定所需的制造工艺，并最终确定组件设计。然后将通过一组KPI来生产和验证组件。我们将通过最终用户和CubeSat primes的输入实现TRL 6/7和随后的商业开发。此外，还将成立一家分拆公司，以开发该项目所产生的技术和合作。

Advanced manufacturing processes are critical to the fabrication of key components in the space propulsion sector. Over the next decade, constellations of CubeSat-sized spacecraft will demand propulsion solutions that are highly efficient while being compact enough to fit within tight volume, mass, and power restrictions. This project aims to develop space qualified manufacturing and integration processes such as ceramic sintering or electronics encapsulation to enable the mass fabrication of propulsion components to demanding requirements. The porous electrospray thruster (PET) is one of the few electric propulsion systems suitable for attitude control and orbital changes of CubeSats, but requires significant manufacturing development inputs to be ready for flight.Rapid commercial exploitation is necessary to capture the CubeSat demand for 300-500 units by the year 2023-24\. Currently at TRL4/5, PET-100 has demonstrated high efficiency (62%), over double that of some of its key competitors. To be flight-ready however, the production techniques of critical components have to allow the required high-volume production using space qualified processes. We will define the manufacturing processes needed and will finalise component design. The components will then be produced and validated through a set of KPIs. We will achieve TRL 6/7 and subsequent commercial exploitation with input from our end-users and CubeSat primes. Furthermore, a spin off company will be established to develop the technology and the collaboration resulting from this project.