Design of a multifunctional electric propulsion subsystem of the spacecraft

A common way to form an electric propulsion subsystem of the spacecraft is to create specialized equipment or to select the most suitable one from the ready-made ones. However, there are cases when the use of existing equipment is not optimal enough and leads to an unjustified increase of the subsystem mass. Therefore, the question of creating a minimum equipment set possibility from which it would be possible to form propulsion subsystems in optimal way is of interest. The set of tasks, variants of use and possible schemes of placing orbital correcting propulsion on the spacecraft are presented. The list of necessary propulsion subsystem elements is presented as follows: a thruster block, a tank, a xenon feed unit, a power processing unit consisting of a power unit and switching units, the complete set of cables and pipelines, the software and mechanical devices for control of the thrust vector (as an option). The necessary capacity of propellant tanks for the tasks of correction and raising of the satellite to GEO with a high-pulse Hall thruster is defined: for orbit correction tasks - up to100 kg, for orbit correction and raising to GEO tasks - up to200 kg. Necessary angle rates of mechanical devices for control of the thrust vector are defined taking into account possible schemes of placing thrusters on the spacecraft. It is shown that in cases when it is required to apply two or more thrusters to increase overall thrust, it is more preferable in the weight aspect to apply a combination of power and switching units instead of monoblock type of power processing units, and advantage can reach tens of kilograms. Provided the listed set of functional units is created, the offered concept will make it easy to form propulsion subsystems of the spacecraft for solving a wide range of tasks. It will reduce the time and money spent on creation of propulsion subsystem for new spacecrafts.