Fabrication of LTCC based Micro Thruster for Precision Controlled Spaceflight

The paper at hand presents the initial investigations on the development and fabrication of a micro thruster based on LTCC technology, delivering a thrust in the micro Newton regime. Using smaller segments of an observation system distributed on two or more spacecrafts, one can realize an observation platform with a huge effective aperture. However, when having instruments on several spacecrafts cooperating, a demand arises for highly accurate positioning of the formation flying spacecrafts. Consequently, the purpose of the micro thruster being developed here is to facilitate constant elimination of the disturbance forces perturbing the orbits and attitudes of formation flying spacecrafts. In the flowing the investigations on the dimensioning and the calculations on the somewhat predictive performance are presented in short form.