F4F · Five kW Electric Propulsion system for Future European missions in MEO, GEO and beyond

Electric Propulsion systems based on HET thrusters are now the de facto standard for more than half of the GEO telecommunications and MEO navigation satellites launched each year, with Fakel's SPT-140d model representing the solution until early 2022 baseline for nearly all LSIs worldwide. This is due to its extreme reliability, the long heritage accumulated over the years, and the considerably lower selling price than the few existing competitors (Safran -France-, Aerojet and Busek -USA-). With the outbreak of war in Ukraine, all LSI found themselves in the need to find an alternative to Fakel's Hall effect thruster. As the only product that can be purchased on the western market together with Aerojet Rocketdyne's XR-5, from February 2022 Safran's PPS©5000 became the de facto new incumbent as it is not subject to ITAR restrictions. The F4F project aims at developing an alternative system, based on a different thruster, SITAEL’s HT5k, featuring magnetic shielding for very long life operations and able to be fed with both Xenon and Krypton.The TU will be coupled with an evolution of flight-proven Thales Belgium Mk3 PPU, the Mk3 EVO, and with an European solution for low pressure flow management from the German Company AST.The three subsystems will be modified to reduce complexity and limit at the bare minimum ITAR/EAR controlled items.Through a full coupling test, F4F will demonstrate performance at system level with the thruster unit operated with both xenon and krypton, and advance its TRL towards a full qualification.