Payload Delivery to Custom Orbits

Electrodynamic vehicles can be used as low-thrust, high-delta-V upper stages that can take payloads to custom orbits from any launch to LEO. They can be packaged into secondary payload slots with one or more payloads to be distributed and inserted into different orbits. The drawing on the left shows the ESPA ring holding secondary payloads, while the drawing on the right shows one of the packaging schemes for electrodynamic tugs with payloads in ESPA slots developed by Tether Applications, Inc.

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• ESPA Ring (CSA Engineering) and Electrodynamic Tug Stowed with Payloads

Electrodynamic vehicles allow rapid creation of multi-plane nano-satellite constellations from a single launch. Such constellations could provide space environment monitoring, Earth observations, and other services. A space weather monitoring constellation of 16 nano-satellites (4.5-kg 3U CubeSats) evenly distributed in 4 orbital planes can be deployed in 4 month. A constellation of 18 communication nano-satellites (3.5-kg 3U CubeSats) distributed in 6 planes can be deployed in about the same time. Only propellantless propulsion makes it possible to deploy the entire constellation from a single ESPA slot.