Lunar Robotic Precursor Missions Using Electric Propulsion

Abstract

A trade study is carried out for the design of electric propulsion based lunar robotic precursor missions. The focus is to understand the relationships between payload mass delivered, electric propulsion power, and trip time. The results are compared against a baseline system using chemical propulsion with LOX/H2. The major differences between the chemical propulsion based and electric propulsion based systems are presented in terms of the payload mass and trip time. It is shown that solar electric propulsion offers significant advantage over chemical propulsion in delivering non-time critical payloads to lunar orbit.