ERC Starting Grant · 2025
Pioneering High-performance Orbital Engines with Non-steady Innovative ACCeleration
Over the last decades Electric Propulsion (EP) has emerged as a transformative technology in space mobility, offering significant advantages and enabling ambitious new missions. Thanks to their high exhaust velocity and fuel efficiency, EP systems have fostered the miniaturization of space assets, catalysing the rise of the New Space era. EP devices generate thrust by converting electrical energy into kinetic energy of a propellant exhausted from the spacecraft. State-of-the-art technologies, such as Hall thrusters, require an electron emitting component to neutralize the accelerated ions. This neutralizer is sensitive to contamination, which strongly constrains the choice of propellant,…
From the public funding record at EU CORDIS. Describes the funded project, not the reviews below.