RITA Ion Thruster

Ion Propulsion
How it Works
Advantages
Applications
Heritage
Thruster RIT-10
Thruster RIT-XT
Thruster RIT-22
Xenon Regulator
Eureca
Artemis

Applications of Astrium Radio Frequency Ion Propulsion

LEO, GEO, Interplanetary and deep space missions.

Astrium's Radio Frequency Ion Propulsion Assembly (RITA), has broken two world records for achieving long duration thrust and can currently achieve a nominal specific impulse of up to 6,200 seconds (6,400 seconds demonstrated).

The RITA-10 ion propulsion system is space qualified and has already been verified in space after having performed flawlessly for thousands of hours without any performance degradation whatsoever.

The advantages of RITA makes it ideally suited to a wide range of space applications where endurance, high specific impulse, more velocity increment and/or higher final velocity is more important than time critical, high thrust acceleration.

LEO, GEO Missions

RITA-10 was initially used on ESA's EURECA platform as a technology demonstrator and more recently to restore Artemis from a total loss to a full recovery. For LEO and GEO missions, RITA-10 can achieve substantial cost savings, longer mission life and/or more payload.

Artemis

Interplanetary Missions

The performance and durability of RITA makes it especially suitable for access to the inner and outer planets and where chemical propulsion alone would not be feasible. To provide for such future mission, Astrium are developing the high performance RITA-22 ion propulsion system, which shall be qualified by 2007. RITA-22 has already been selected for such future spacecraft as AlphaCom, first flight 2008. The RITA-22 system has evolved upon the foundations of 45 years of ion propulsion heritage and achievement, together with a leading team of international partners, including Alcatel.
Like the RITA 10 system, RITA-22 is being developed by the Astrium Lampoldshausen Centre who were also prime contractors for the record breaking propulsion system that sent Galileo to Jupiter.

Typical applications of Astrium Radio-frequency Ion Propulsion

Application RIT Function Geostationary Satellites: Telecommunication. - TV, Radio. - Global mobile networks. In-orbit position control. Station keeping. Orbit transfer manoeuvres. Orbit raising. Precision manoeuvres. Low Earth Orbit Satellites: - Navigation, Science. - Earth Observation. - Service Modules Residual atmosphere drag compensation. In-orbit position control. Station keeping. Proximity and precision manoeuvres. Interplanetary / deep space missions. - inner solar system. - outer solar system. - asteroid and comets. Orbit transfer. Planetary transfer. In-orbit position control. Precision manoeuvres.

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