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Concept
SMART-1
Summary
SMART-1 was a Swedish-designed European Space Agency satellite that orbited around the Moon. It was launched on 27 September 2003 at 23:14 UTC from the Guiana Space Centre in Kourou, French Guiana. "SMART-1" stands for Small Missions for Advanced Research in Technology-1. On 3 September 2006 (05:42 UTC), SMART-1 was deliberately crashed into the Moon's surface, ending its mission.
SMART-1 was about one meter across (3.3 ft), and lightweight in comparison to other probes. Its launch mass was 367 kg or 809 pounds, of which 287 kg (633 lb) was non-propellant.
It was propelled by a solar-powered Hall effect thruster (Snecma PPS-1350-G) using 82 Kg of xenon gas contained in a 50 litres tank at a pressure of 150 bar at launch. The ion engine thruster used an electrostatic field to ionize the xenon and accelerate the ions achieving a specific impulse of 16.1 kN·s/kg (1,640 seconds), more than three times the maximum for chemical rockets. One kg of propellant (1/350 to 1/300 of the total mass of the spacecraft) produced a delta-v of about 45 m/s. The electric propulsion subsystem weighted 29 kg with a peak power consumption of 1,200 watts. SMART-1 was the first in the program of ESA's Small Missions for Advanced Research and Technology.
The solar arrays made capable of 1850W at the beginning of the mission, were able to provide the maximum set of 1,190 W to the thruster, giving a nominal thrust of 68 mN, hence an acceleration of 0.2 mm/s2 or 0.7 m/s per hour (i.e., just under 0.00002 g of acceleration). As with all ion-engine powered craft, orbital maneuvers were not carried out in short bursts but very gradually. The particular trajectory taken by SMART-1 to the Moon required thrusting for about one third to one half of every orbit. When spiraling away from the Earth thrusting was done on the perigee part of the orbit. At the end of the mission, the thruster had demonstrated the following capability:
Thruster operating time: 5000 h
Xenon throughput: 82 kg
Total Impulse: 1.2 MN-s
Total ΔV: 3.
Official source
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Orbital maneuver
In spaceflight, an orbital maneuver (otherwise known as a burn) is the use of propulsion systems to change the orbit of a spacecraft. For spacecraft far from Earth (for example those in orbits around the Sun) an orbital maneuver is called a deep-space maneuver (DSM). The rest of the flight, especially in a transfer orbit, is called coasting.
Ion thruster
An ion thruster, ion drive, or ion engine is a form of electric propulsion used for spacecraft propulsion. It creates thrust by accelerating ions using electricity. An ion thruster ionizes a neutral gas by extracting some electrons out of atoms, creating a cloud of positive ions. Ion thrusters are categorized as either electrostatic or electromagnetic. Electrostatic thruster ions are accelerated by the Coulomb force along the electric field direction.
Hall-effect thruster
In spacecraft propulsion, a Hall-effect thruster (HET) is a type of ion thruster in which the propellant is accelerated by an electric field. Hall-effect thrusters (based on the discovery by Edwin Hall) are sometimes referred to as Hall thrusters or Hall-current thrusters. Hall-effect thrusters use a magnetic field to limit the electrons' axial motion and then use them to ionize propellant, efficiently accelerate the ions to produce thrust, and neutralize the ions in the plume.