12-kW Advanced Electric Propulsion System Hall Current Thruster Qualification and Production Status

NASA continues to evolve a human exploration approach for beyond low-Earth orbit and to do so, where practical, in a manner involving international, academic, and industry partners. The center of this approach is NASA’s Gateway that is envisioned to provide a maneuverable outpost in lunar orbit that extends human presence in deep space and expands on NASA’s exploration goals. The Gateway represents the initial step in NASA’s architecture for human cislunar operations, lunar surface access, and missions to Mars. NASA announced at the May 2020 NASA Advisory Council’s Human Explorations and Operations Committee a plan that calls for launching the first two elements of Gateway as a co-manifested mission. Launching the Power and Propulsion Element (PPE) and the Habitation and Logistics Outpost (HALO) together reduces mission risk, utilizes PPE’s high-power Solar Electric Propulsion (SEP) system to transport both elements to lunar orbit, and reduces overall cost. NASA and Maxar Technologies have a commercial partnership to develop and demonstrate the high-power SEP spacecraft. The PPE is baselined to include both the 12-kW Advanced Electric Propulsion System (AEPS) developed by Aerojet Rocketdyne (AR) and a Maxar-developed 6-kW Hall thruster system for a total beginning of life propulsion power of over 48 kW. Development of the 12-kW Hall thruster electric propulsion system was led by the NASA Glenn Research Center (GRC) and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and began with maturation of the Hall Effect Rocket with Magnetic Shielding (HERMeS) Technology Demonstration Units (TDUs). Technology development transitioned to Aerojet Rocketdyne (AR) in May 2016 via the AEPS contract, which is managed by NASA GRC with funding from NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate under the Technology Demonstration Missions Program.