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Over the past several decades, hoping for accelerated scientific returns, the space industry has eagerly researched propulsion. This has resulted in an array of breakthrough technologies that would allow not only more rapid missions to further study the planets and asteroids within our solar system, but also ventures to distant destinations into deep space, or even enabling human settlements on the moon, Mars, and beyond.
Advanced Space Propulsion: Technologies, Missions, and Computer Modeling includes coverage of all these technologies in an integrated manner. The volume, written by a team of sector-specific R&D experts, touches upon fundamentals cardinal to the understanding of [i] orbit theory and its implications for control, estimation, and optimization of trajectory and attitude and [ii] how each mission is designed (depending primarily on the mass of the payload, but also on how far from Earth the launch vehicle needs to go), and then succeeds in consolidating them with software and computer applications for simulations and modeling. It continues with a discussion on the complete gamut of in-space propulsion power sources and concludes with both human and robotic mission-related case studies and future implementation examples.
The outcome is a carefully calibrated and self-contained resource that will prove to be invaluable for graduate and senior undergraduate students, researchers, scientists, and engineering professionals alike.
List of contents
PART I: ORBITS AND MISSIONS1. HISTORY
2. SPACECRAFT MISSIONS
3. MISSION ANALYSIS
4. ORBIT THEORY
5. STRAIGHT LINE TRAJECTORIES
6. TRAJECTORY PLANNING AND OPTIMIZATION
PART II: POWER FOR PROPULSION SYSTEMS AND PROPULSION SOURCES7. CHEMICAL
8. SOLAR
9. NUCLEAR FISSION
10. NUCLEAR FUSION
11. POWER BEAMING
12. SOLAR SAILS
13. ELECTRIC POWER CONVERSION
PART III: PROPULSION MISSION CASE STUDIES14. DEEP SPACE 1
15. BEPICOLUMBO
16. GEO SATELLITE STATIONKEEPING
17. LEO ORBIT MAINTENANCE
PART IV: PROPULSION FUTURE MISSIONS18. HUMAN MARS MISSION WITH NUCLEAR THERMAL
19. ORBITAL MISSION TO URANUS
20. TITAN FUSION POWERED AIRCRAFT
21. MISSION TO MERCURY
22. SOLAR GRAVITATIONAL LENS
23. ALPHA CENTAURI ORBITER
About the author
Mr. Paluszek is President of Princeton Satellite Systems (PSS), which he founded in 1992. He holds an Engineer's degree in Aeronautics and Astronautics (1979), an SM in Aeronautics and Astronautics (1979), and an SB in Electrical Engineering (1976), all from MIT. He is the PI on the ARPA-E OPEN grant to develop a compact nuclear fusion reactor based on the Princeton Field Reversed Configuration concept. He is also PI on the ARPA-E GAMOW project to develop power electronics for the fusion industry. He is PI on a project to design a closed-loop Brayton Cycle heat engine for space applications. Prior to founding PSS, he worked at GE Astro Space in East Windsor, NJ. At GE, he designed or led the design of several attitude control systems including GPS IIR, Inmarsat 3, and GGS Polar platform. He also was an ACS analyst on over a dozen satellite launches, including the GSTAR III recovery. Before joining GE, he worked at the Draper Laboratory and at MIT, where he still teaches Attitude Control Systems (course 16.S685/16.S890). He has 14 patents registered to his name.
