Enabling Solutions for the Grand Challenge of Electric Propulsion Development

Dear Colleagues,

Electric propulsion (EP) boasts a remarkable legacy of success within just a few decades, tracing its origins as an independent field back to the early 1960s. This rapid ascent, however, faces transformative challenges driven by the evolving demands of the modern era of space exploration. The need for faster, cost-effective development methodologies is reshaping the EP landscape, and it will be essential to scale EP system manufacturing to match the rise in satellite constellations.

Sustainability goals, rapid time-to-market pressures, and demands for high reliability challenge traditional design and qualification norms, intensifying the drive to evolve conventional methods. Conventional practices are being further challenged by the increasing interest in very-low Earth orbit (VLEO) operations, as well as ambitions for more challenging deep-space science and human exploration missions that push boundaries in the ability to demonstrate integrated system performance and lifetime.

Facility effects and the limitations of ground testing continue to be highlighted by gaps in translating on-ground verifications to on-orbit performance. Meanwhile, the need for extensive life-testing as part of the present industry-standard approach to qualification has imposed significant financial and schedule burdens on development of advanced concepts and technologies—burdens that are becoming unsustainable and unaffordable as the industry eyes mass-produced products and higher-power, longer-lifetime propulsion solutions.

The critical gaps in our understanding of complex physics underpinning many EP technologies, compounded by the lack of affordable predictive models, have hindered optimization-based design, leading to costly and non-recurrent trial-and-error-based development practices.

This Special Issue of Aerospace seeks innovative contributions from across the EP community that are aimed at addressing development and qualification practices in the field, including understanding fundamental phenomena and creating the tools, techniques, and processes for electric propulsion system development and qualification that support a step-change in the production and use of EP systems. This Issue will highlight state-of-the-art research and development addressing this grand challenge, from theoretical studies and numerical simulations to diagnostics and innovative verification and testing practices.

By bringing these efforts together, we hope to provide a meaningful, highly visible platform that captures the recent innovative transformations of electric propulsion, moving towards a development process that is sustainable, reliable, and cost-effective.

Dr. Maryam Reza
Dr. Farbod Faraji
Dr. Dan M. Goebel
Dr. Kurt Polzin
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Aerospace is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• electric propulsion
• numerical simulations
• advanced diagnostics and experiments
• machine-learning-enabled modeling
• facility effects
• predictive modeling and control
• digitalization and digital engineering in EP
• physics of EP operation
• novel EP system verification approaches
• innovative development practices
• sustainable and scalable EP system development