Power-Sharing with Electric Propulsion and Secondary Batteries

An in-house study has revealed that most AF synchronous equatorial satellites have an appreciable fraction of power on the spacecraft which is not being used continuously. The study reveals that this excess power may be used to operate electric thrusters for stationkeeping functions, on an appropriate duty cycle. By selecting the proper secondary battery charge rate, commensurate with battery capacity and reliability, the electric thruster performance may be optimized to maximize satellite payload capabilities. Percent payload improvement from a few percent to 25 when compared to a non-power-sharing ion engine, and from 5 to 75 compared to a power-sharing colloid engine may be realized.