You won the contract to supply an electric propulsion system for the Alphabus platform. What are the advantages of this technology?
First of all, it offers considerable weight savings over conventional chemical propulsion systems. It also develops a low level of thrust, which reduces the risk of oscillation, and therefore any decoupling of the antennas and the platform itself, while also limiting the risks of beam depointing. On Alphabus, this high-precision electric propulsion system will be used for orbital control. It will provide North-South stationkeeping, to ensure transmission continuity.

What’s new about Snecma’s solution?
We have already developed this type of propulsion system for other applications, such as the Smart-1 lunar probe, but in that case the thrust was generally continuous. The PPS®1350 system was specially developed for communications satellites. On Alphabus, it will be used for pulsed operation, at a rate of about an hour a day for the design life of 15 years.

That’s an exceptionally long service life, isn’t it?
Absolutely! A large part of our job in the development process was to check that the system’s reliability would meet these requirements.

More : Read the article "PPS®1350 : to the Moon on gossamer wings !"

More : Read the article "Electric propulsion for Alphabus, from Snecma"