Lampoldshausen
Showcase

AlphaBus
ARD
Ariane 5 ACS
Artemis
ATV
EuroStar
Galileo - NASA
Galileo - ESA
Mars Express
Meteosat
Rocsat
TerraSAR-X
VEGA - RACS

Artemis Ion Propulsion

Satellite and spacecraft propulsion systems from Astrium Lampoldshausen

Artemis - from total loss to full recovery   Image courtesy: ESA Rita ion thruster aboard Artemis just before fairing encapsulation   Image courtesy: Telespazio Artemis recovery orbit

The propulsion team at Lampoldshausen were the first in Europe to develop an ion propulsion system. The key systems element being the Radiofrequency Ion Thruster Assembly (RITA).

In October 2001, the team ran RITA for 3,200 hours setting a world record. They later broke their own world record when RITA ran for more than 20,000 hours during a durability trial conducted in a test chamber at the European ESTEC facility.

The RITA ion propulsion system was first used in flight aboard EURECA and subsequently aboard the Artemis (Advanced Relay Technology Mission) satellite, launched aboard Ariane 5 on 12th July 2001. RITA was integrated to Artemis as an experiment for controlling perpendicular drift to the orbital plane.

Artemis is designed for operation in a geostationary orbit (36,000 km). However, due to an upper stage malfunction, Artemis was injected into a low elliptical orbit having an apogee of 17,487 km, instead of the targeted geostaionary transfer orbit of 35,853 km.

Using onboard chemical propulsion, Artemis was raised to a circular orbit of 31,000 km within a few days of launch (see image 'green' orbits)

Before Artemis could be raised the remaining 5000 km using just the ion propulsion system, new strategies had to be put in place, including new onboard control modes, a new station network and new flight control procedures.

After having established and validated the new software strategies, ion propulsion characteristics and other preparations, orbit raising using just the ion propulsion system commenced on 19 February 2002.

With a thrust of just 0.015 N, RITA raised the orbit of Artemis by just 15 km per day until operational geostationary orbit was achieved (see image 'red' band - Artemis Recovery Orbit). Again, RITA broke yet another world record - the first orbital transfer to geostationary orbit using ion propulsion - an unplanned role for which the original RITA experiment was neither planned nor designed.

Artemis Image courtesy: ESA enlarge

Whilst RITA provided the means for saving the mission, this could not have been achieved without the motivation and dedication of the engineers and specialists from ESA, Alenia Spazio, Telespazio and Astrium, who worked tirelessly to reconfigure Artemis. Artemis is now able to fulfil its planned 10 year mission and is already successfully serving a large community of diverse users.

Further Information

More information about RITA can be found here:
RITA Performance characteristics and background.
RITA System (pdf file).

Contact for Further Information