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RITA Ion Thruster
Ion Propulsion
How it Works
Advantages
Applications
Heritage
Thruster RIT-10
Thruster RIT-XT
Thruster RIT-22
Xenon Regulator
Eureca
Artemis
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Radiofrequency Ion Thruster Heritage: EURECA.
European Retrievable Carrier - The world's first dedicated microgravity free-flyer.
Eureca was launched on 31 July 1992 by the Space Shuttle Atlantis and released
into Space on 2 August. Eureca was the largest spacecraft ever built and
flown by ESA, weighing 4500 kg and measuring 20 m across. It was the
first carrier to be returned to Earth for sample access and potential re-flight.
Eureca was retrieved on 1 July 1993 by the Space Shuttle Endeavour.
Orbiting at 510 Km altitude, Eureca's 1000 kg multidisciplinary payload
consisted of 15 different active experiment facilities and three passive
'add-ons'. This ensemble made it possible to carry out successfully 71
individual experiments serving 31 scientists and researchers - the Principal
Investigators - from 29 institutes in eight ESA member countries. The
research undertaken using the Eureca payload ranges from exobiology to
crystal growth, material processing, particle collection, surface physics,
technology applications and scientific observation of the Earth's atmosphere,
of the Sun and of celestial X-ray sources.
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EURECA
EURECA
Mission Patch
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Beam diameter: 87 mm.
240 hours operation
in space.
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Flawless operation.
- Performance in agreement with ground test results.
- No EMC interference between satellite, payload or electronics.
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RITA-10 Artemis
Since the EURECA mission, the RITA-10 performance
has increased to over 20,000 hours of operation and was used to recover
the Artemis mission.
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| Based on the success
of RITA-10, further ion thruster evolution and technological advances have
been made to achieve the advanced RIT-XT yielding
even greater performance. |
Contact for Further Information
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