The European Space Agency (ESA) has selected Aerojet Rocketdyne’s subsidiary European Space Propulsion (ESP) for flight qualification of the 5kW XR-5E Hall Thruster on telecommunication satellites.

Part of ESA’s Advanced Research in Telecommunications Systems (ARTES) initiative, the contract is categorised under ARTES 3-4.

Supported by the UK Space Agency, the ESP ARTES 3-4 programme will develop, qualify and demonstrate products, as well as explore innovative concepts to produce Satcom products.

Under the €11m contract, ESP will develop a new ThermoThrottle Xenon Flow Controller (XFC), which will be combined with XR-5 Hall Thruster to create a new XR-5E Thruster.

"Supported by the UK Space Agency, the ESP ARTES 3-4 programme will develop, qualify and demonstrate products, as well as explore innovative concepts to produce Satcom products."

ESP managing director Paul Sinton said: "The telecommunications satellite market is trending toward increased use of high-power electric propulsion and improved affordability.

"Our objective at ESP is to meet both those needs by bringing the highest-performance, longest-life, five-kilowatt Hall Thruster together with a simplified XFC and produce it in the lower-cost environment in Northern Ireland."

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The company will create a document covering requirements of Geosynchronous (GEO) Comsat platforms and other key satellite programmes.

A series of engineering and flight qualification model hardware will be built with validation testing conducted at each phase.

The XR-5E Thruster capabilities will be evaluated as part of final flight qualification test programme, as well as system integration tests and power processor coupling tests.

XR-5 is said to be the only electric propulsion product that demonstrated electric propulsion orbit-raising of a GEO Comsat from geosynchronous transfer orbit (GTO) to GEO.

Aerojet Rocketdyne delivered 16 flight XR-5 Hall Thrusters and logged 64 orders for XR-5 Hall Thrusters covering three GEO Comsat platforms.