A €3.9m EU-funded project called ET COMPACT is developing three fuel-free propulsion systems around solar energy and green propulsion innovations. The aim is to reduce satellite costs while significantly increasing the proportion of useable satellite mass, for example for scientific experiments, antennas or cameras.
The first technology is a thin film 2-terminal tandem CIGS/Perovskite module for in-space solar energy harvesting and green propulsion, with the goal of achieving an efficiency larger than 15 percent and a power-per-weight ratio larger than 50W/kg to reduce the cost of in-space solar panels.
The second technology is a miniaturized (target volume 3U) green-propulsion mobility module device based on an electrodynamic tether. Designed to have tether reel-in/reel-out capability and equipped with a field emission cathode, the mobility module can use the harvested in-space solar energy to produce propulsion (both thrust and drag) without using propellant or expellant. For the mobility module, and the satellite platform to host it, the group will research into ultralight structures based on 3D printed compliant polymeric techniques. Besides reducing volume and mass, the goal is to integrate compliance mechanisms for both tether deployment and thin-film solar panel unfolding.
The third technology, which combines the experience and knowledge of the consortium on both PV and tether technologies, is a novel bare-photovoltaic tether that uses the metallic tape tether for both electron collection and as the back contact of tandem CIGS/Perovskite modules. The aim is to integrate solar energy harvesting and propellant-less propulsion into a single device.
The project is led by the University of Carlos III, Madrid (Spain), and other partners are Deimos Engineering (Spain), the University of Padova (Italy), TU Dresden (Germany), Halocell Europe (Italy), Sunplugged Solare Energiesysteme (Austria), and Persei Space (Spain).
