Use of solar electric propulsion can result in mass and propellant savings for future NASA missions to explore the solar system, enabling lightweight probes to targets in the solar system that have previously been out of reach. However, such electric-propulsion missions require large amounts of power, and require extremely lightweight solar arrays. The NASA Glenn COMPASS team was used to perform conceptual designs for several advanced missions, in order to develop a top-level understanding of the difficulties and the technologies needed, and the interaction of the power system with the propulsion system requirements for missions both close to, and far from, the Sun. Some near term and farther term missions analyzed include an exploration mission to a binary asteroid, a mission to land on and return a sample from the large main-belt asteroid Ceres, a mission to land a surface probe on Mercury, and a mission to the outer planet Uranus.
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机译：太阳能推进器的使用可以为未来的NASA任务探索太阳系节省大量的质量和推进剂，从而使轻巧的探头能够探测到以前无法到达的太阳系中的目标。然而，这种电推进任务需要大量的功率，并且需要极其轻便的太阳能电池阵列。 NASA Glenn COMPASS团队用于执行多个高级任务的概念设计，以便对困难和所需的技术以及对任务接近的动力系统与推进系统要求之间的相互作用有一个高级的了解。 ，并且远离太阳。对一些近期和远期任务进行了分析，包括对二元小行星的探索任务，对大型主带小行星谷神星降落并返回样品的任务，对水星进行地面探测的任务以及对水星的任务。外行星天王星。
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