Advanced Space Propulsion

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.

• Covers all advanced propulsion technologies, both existing and future.
• Takes advantage of a structured and comprehensive approach to seamlessly combine theory, technological outcomes, and their practical applications.
• Features case studies and worked-out examples with MATLAB code.