Computer Science – Performance
Scientific paper
Sep 2008
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2008epsc.conf..245b&link_type=abstract
European Planetary Science Congress 2008, Proceedings of the conference held 21-25 September, 2008 in Münster, Germany. Online a
Computer Science
Performance
Scientific paper
Electrodynamic tethers are known to exhibit high performance in the Jupiter environment , both as propellantless propulsion devices and as power generating systems. In spite of the considerable amount of research work of electrodynamic tethers in the Jupiter environment the case involving high inclination orbit has never been addressed so far. We present a power generation scheme for rotating electrodynamic tethers which can be applied to a generic Jupiter science missions employing polar orbits. We show that when the orbit inclination reaches 90 degrees and the tether rotates in the orbital plane the effect of the tether electrodynamic force does not impact orbital energy but orbit inclination. Thanks to favorable environmental conditions at Jupiter (i.e. strong magnetic field and fast rotating plasmasphere) relatively high power levels can be obtained with tethers of modest length when the tether transits the low altitude regions around the planet. In addition the impact on orbit inclination is minimal thanks to the high specific angular momentum of jovian orbits. As a numerical example we consider an electrodynamic tether subsystem consisting of two 3- km-long 5-cm wide and 0.05-mm-thick tape tether arms deployed radially from a main central spacecraft whose orbit has the characteristic of the current baseline JUNO orbit. The tether subsystem, whose total mass is less than 50 kg, can provide kW level average power along a 120 degrees orbital arc around the equatorial plane crossing. The inclination variation induced by the Lorentz force in this case is below 1/1000 of a degree per orbit. Applications of the concept to future Jupiter exploration missions are discussed.
Bombardelli Claudio
Lorenzini Enrico C.
Sanmartin Juan R.
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