Twin ion thrusters firing
ESA. Space Engineering & Technology - Preparing for the Future. Shaping the Future 16 November 2018 In mid-December, twin discs will begin glowing blue on the underside of a minibus-sized spacecraft in deep space. At that moment Europe and Japan's BepiColombo mission will have just come a crucial step closer to Mercury. This week sees the in-flight commissioning and test firing of the four thrusters - with one or two firing at a time - of the Solar Electric Propulsion System that BepiColombo relies on to reach the innermost planet. This marks the first in-flight operation of the most powerful and highest-performance electric propulsion system flown on any space mission to date. Each thruster and its associated power processing and propellant flow control units will be tested to full power to check no ill-effects were incurred from launch, culminating in the first twin thruster operations - the configuration to be used throughout most of the mission.
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