WASHINGTON — Benchmark Area’s first electrical thruster is in orbit and able to start operations as the corporate strikes into large-scale manufacturing of the methods.
The corporate introduced March 19 that its Xantus thruster is on the Electro-Optical/Infrared (EO/IR) Climate Techniques (EWS) demonstration cubesat constructed by Orion Area Options and launched on the SpaceX Transporter-10 rideshare mission March 4. The corporate mentioned it expects to quickly begin firing the thruster after finishing on-orbit checkouts.
Xantus is a steel plasma thruster that makes use of molybdenum as propellant. Benchmark, which has developed chemical propulsion methods, obtained the expertise in its August 2022 acquisition of Alameda Utilized Science Company.
On EWS, a 12U cubesat, the millinewton-class Xantus thruster will probably be used for end-to-end spacecraft operations, together with deorbiting on the finish of its mission. Benchmark, although, sees the most important demand for the thruster on bigger spacecraft.
“The majority of our demand proper now’s within the microsat class,” mentioned Chris Carella, chief industrial officer of Benchmark, in an interview. On these spacecraft, he mentioned, Xantus could be utilized in clusters of two or 4 to offer stationkeeping and different “precision maneuver” functions, reminiscent of for proximity operations or payload pointing.
“Xantus does a fantastic job at the whole lot a cubesat must do, however primarily the place the demand is coming from is that microsat and ESPA-class,” he mentioned.
Benchmark is providing Xantus together with chemical propulsion thrusters that supply increased thrust, a “multi-tech hybrid” method. “Now we have this toolbox of various applied sciences,” he mentioned. “Benchmark from the beginning has wished to have the ability to serve a buyer from mission to mission even because the mission wants change.”
Benchmark says it’s transferring forward with large-scale manufacturing of Xantus, with greater than 50 items scheduled for supply this yr. That features greater than 10 going to In-Area Missions, a subsidiary of BAE Techniques in the UK that develops small satellites.
The Xantus unit on the EWS cubesat is technically not the primary system flown. A Xantus thruster was on an undisclosed satellite tv for pc launched in January 2023 however which did not deploy and thus couldn’t be operated.
The sooner thruster was constructed by Alameda earlier than its acquisition by Benchmark, mentioned Kent Frankovich, vp of electrical propulsion at Benchmark. Since then, the corporate has refined the design of the thruster with the intent of creating it simpler to fabricate in massive portions.
“We took what was a hand-assembled unit that we knew would work however was very a lot not prepared for bigger manufacturing,” he mentioned. “You may make one which works, however are you able to make 10 or 100?”
Along with refining the design to scale up manufacturing, he mentioned the corporate has made different modifications, reminiscent of bettering software program that runs the thruster and becoming the thruster right into a 1U kind issue. “That was all about maturing the product.”
“That is going to provide us an enormous sigh of reduction,” Carella mentioned of the upcoming on-orbit checks of Xantus. “Seeing it hearth on orbit is that subsequent degree of credibility.”