CHEOPS - Consortium for Hall Effect Orbital Propulsion System

CHEOPS (Consortium for Hall Effect Orbital Propulsion System) is a challenging space project that has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under Grant Agreement n. 730135. CHEOPS proposes to develop three different Hall Effect Thruster (HET) Electric Propulsion Systems (EPS), with three different application fields/orbits: - a low power for Low Earth Orbit (LEO) applications. In this orbit, all satellites for Earth Observation (environmental monitoring, maritime surveillance and many other services involved in human activities) are positioned, as well as the International Space Station (ISS); - a dual mode EPS for GEO applications, mostly used for commercial communications satellites, broadcast satellites and for weather and meteorological satellites; - a >20 kW high thrust EPS for exploration applications. The CHEOPS Consortium is led by Safran Aircraft Engines and is comprised of representatives of the biggest European Prime satellite makers (Airbus Defence and Space, OHB System, Thales Alenia Space), the full EPS supply chain (Advanced Space Technologies, Bradford Engineering, Deutsches Zentrum fuer Luft – und Raumfahrt (DLR), SITAEL) and supported by academia and research centres (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Chalmers Technology University, SME4SPACE, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid).