RIT-3.5 Development - Miniaturised Gridded Ion Engine for NGGM

Selected past projects

[2012–2018]

This ESA-funded activity focused on design, development and testing of a miniaturised gridded ion engine (GIE / RIT-3.5) engineering model (EM) capable of delivering extremely broad thrust dynamic range from 50 µN up to 2,5 mN of thrust for lateral drag compensation, attitude control and low-noise force actuation in the Next-Generation Gravity Mission (NGGM) and similar Earth-observation formations. The work addressed improvements in dynamic thrust range, fast fine controllability with a slew rate of over 0.5 mN/s, resolution of 0.5 μN, and a rise and fall time of <2ms, as well as specific power and specific impulse. Additionally, it reduced thrust noise to below 1 μN/√Hz above 0.08 Hz. The lifetime performance within this project was also confirmed to exceed 200 kN*s of total impulse, equivalent to approximately 10 years of continuous operation.

ESA TDE programme - Programme reference: T119-301MP. Contract Nr.: 4000104822/11/NL/CP.
Key publications:
  • Feili, D., Smirnova, M., Dobkevicius, M., Di Cara, D. M., Massotti, L., Bosch Borras, E., Mingo Perez, A., Lotz, B., & Collingwood, C. M. (2015, July 4–10). Design, construction and testing of a radio frequency mini ion engine according to the propulsion requirements of the next generation gravity missions “NGGM” (IEPC-2015-277/ISTS-2015-b-277). Paper presented at the Joint Conference of the 30th International Symposium on Space Technology and Science, 34th International Electric Propulsion Conference and 6th Nano-satellite Symposium, Hyogo-Kobe, Japan. LINK PDF
  • Smirnova, M., Mingo Perez, A., Feili, D., Massotti, L., Bosch Borras, E., Di Cara, D. M., Dobkevicius, M., & Collingwood, C. M. (2016, May 2–6). RIT-3.5: A radio frequency mini ion engine according to the propulsion requirements of the Next Generation Gravity Missions “NGGM” (SP2016_3125250). Paper presented at Space Propulsion 2016, Rome, Italy. PDF
  • Guarducci, F., Marangone, D., Clark, S., Lewis, R., Gabriel, S. B., Smirnova, M., & Mingo, A. (2022, June 19–23). Development and industrialization of the RIT 3.5 (IEPC-2022-272). Paper presented at the 37th International Electric Propulsion Conference, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA. LINK PDF
  • ESA. Miniaturised Gridded Ion Engine (GIE) Breadboarding and Testing for Future Earth Observation Missions (NGGM). ESA Contract No. 4000104822/11/NL/CP, Programme Ref. T119-301MP. ESA Nebula Project Page, 2018.