Survey and Performance Evaluation of Small-Satellite Propulsion Technologies

The growing interest in small satellites (smallsats) is primarily a function of their affordability and versatility across a wide range of space mission applications. For these reasons, smallsats have found valuable applications in government, industry, and academic settings. The continued advancement of smallsats depends on the ability of the aerospace industry to supply affordable, reliable, and efficient miniaturized spacecraft thrusters. Choosing a suitable propulsion system for a smallsat mission involves tradeoffs between performance, cost, and reliability. This study compares the advertised performance of existing chemical, cold gas, and electric propulsion systems across two representative smallsat missions with the goal of providing mission-enabling information to the smallsat research community. Results show that electric propulsion systems are the top performers for both missions. The required wet mass for electrospray thrusters and pulsed plasma devices demonstrated low sensitivity to increasing orbit lifetime, increasing less than 0.5 kg over 15+ year increases in orbit lifetime, making them the top-performing systems in a low-impulse long-duration mission. Because of their characteristically high specific impulse, gridded ion thrusters emerged as the top-performing systems in a high-impulse interplanetary mission with delivered mass capability decreasing less than 25 kg for a delta-V increase of 2000 m/s.