ETD

• Atmosphere-Breathing Electric Propulsion (ABEP)
• Earth Observation
• Space Tug
• Very Low Earth Orbit
• Very Low Mars Orbit

Operating satellites in Very Low Earth Orbit (VLEO) benefits the already expanding New Space industry in applications including Earth observation and beyond. However, long-term operations at such low altitudes require propulsion systems which compensate the high atmospheric drag forces, so that, when using conventional propulsion systems, the amount of storable propellant limits the maximum mission lifetime. The latter can be avoided by applying Atmosphere-Breathing Electric Propulsion (ABEP) systems, which collect the residual atmospheric particles and use them as propellant for an electric thruster. Thus, the requirement of on-board propellant storage can ideally be nullified. At the Institute of Space Systems (IRS) of the University of Stuttgart, an intake and a RF Helicon-based Plasma Thruster (IPT) for ABEP systems are developed within the Horizons 2020 funded DISCOVERER project. In order to assess possible future use cases, this thesis work proposes and analyses several novel ABEP based mission scenarios. Starting from technology demonstration mission in VLEO, more complex mission scenarios are derived and discussed in detail. These include, amongst others, orbit maintenance around Mars as well as refuelling and space tug missions. The results show that the potential of ABEP system can exceed drag compensation missions and shows that a multitude of different future mission applications exist.