BENEFITS OF SOLAR ELECTRIC PROPULSION FOR THE NEXT-GENERATION OF PLANETARY EXPLORATION MISSIONS

Planetary missions of the future will have increasingly greater energy requirements due to the desire for in-situ investigations and faster flight times. Solar electric propulsion provides a means of more effec tively accomplishing these types of missions. The first planetary low- thrust mission will be launched in July 1998, and fly by an asteroid, a comet, and the planet Mars. This mission will demonstrate solar elec tric propulsion technology, and lay the groundwork for more exciting m issions in the future. Three missions representative of the types of f uture missions for which solar electric propulsion might be used are s hown. In each case, the performance of solar electric propulsion and c hemical options are compared.