Aerojet Rocketdyne, in collaboration with NASA Glenn Research Center, has developed a 12 kW hall Current Thruster in support of the NASA Gateway mission to establish a permanent human presence in lunar orbit and to land the next American astronauts on the Moon.
The Advanced Electric Propulsion System (AEPS) program has completed the development testing of a high power, solar-electric propulsion Hall Current thruster design that will be used on the NASA Power & Propulsion Element (PPE) of the Gateway space station. Production of three flight thrusters is nearing completion and the program is performing parallel qualification tests at the component and thruster levels. This presentation will give an overview of the AEPS program and discuss future applications for the AEPS thruster.
Eleanor Forbes, AEPS Chief Engineer | L3Harris/Aerojet Rocketdyne
Eleanor Forbes is the Chief Engineer of the Advanced Electric Propulsion System Hall Current thruster program at Aerojet Rocketdyne.
She holds a Ph.D. in plasma physics with a focus in High Energy Density Plasma diagnostics and plasma-material interactions.