Solar electric propulsion for advanced planetary missions

Use of solar electric propulsion can result in mass and propellant savings for future NASA missions to explore the solar system, enabling lightweight probes to targets in the solar system that have previously been out of reach. However, such electric-propulsion missions require large amounts of power, and require extremely lightweight solar arrays. The NASA Glenn COMPASS team was used to perform conceptual designs for several advanced missions, in order to develop a top-level understanding of the difficulties and the technologies needed, and the interaction of the power system with the propulsion system requirements for missions both close to, and far from, the Sun. Some near term and farther term missions analyzed include an exploration mission to a binary asteroid, a mission to land on and return a sample from the large main-belt asteroid Ceres, a mission to land a surface probe on Mercury, and a mission to the outer planet Uranus.