Press Release 01/20/2020 – AIS Partnership with Citadel Space Systems

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CSS-AIS Joint Collaboration
Michael Bretti FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Founder – Applied Ion Systems LLC

Applied Ion Systems to Partner with Citadel Space Systems to Develop Revolutionary New Electric Propulsion and Nanosatellite Technology

New York, US – 20th Jan 2020 – Applied Ion Systems LLC (AIS) is excited to announce today that it has formalized a collaborative agreement with UK-based Citadel Space Systems Ltd (CSS) to develop a revolutionary new type of electric propulsion for nanosatellites. Using a type of thruster technology called electrospray propulsion, Applied Ion Systems hopes to develop a set of thruster systems that out-perform the current market in cost, efficiency, power and lifetime.

Citadel Space Systems intends to aid AIS in development, testing, and qualifying of their new thruster technology, as well as collaborate to integrate specialized thruster systems into CSS’ own spacecraft platforms. Using AIS’ largely open source, agile development methodology, CSS hope to be able to iterate development quickly and approach a flight-ready status faster than competing developers, offering highly capable satellite platforms at a fraction of the current cost.

About Citadel Space Systems – @citadelspacesys

Citadel Space Systems is developing a series of pico- and nanosatellite platforms with an emphasis on enabling science missions with extensive requirements. This includes “simple” mission profiles like those in LEO (Low Earth Orbit), but extends to include more ambitious mission concepts Beyond Earth Orbit – explored by nanosatellites only once before.

CSS is building three platforms – “Squire” – an open source pocketqube platform, will aid amateurs and research institutes with smaller budgets to take part in the growing space industry and fly experiments of their own. “Knight” – a 1U to 3U cubesat platform, is built to bridge the gap between educational cubesats and cutting edge technology demonstration missions, and is specialized to function in Near Earth Orbits. Finally, “Paladin” is a 6U to 16U platform that is designed from first principles to operate the most demanding payloads in the most demanding mission profiles – deep space exploration.

About Applied Ion Systems – @Applied_Ion

Applied Ion Systems is a unique and unconventional electric propulsion R&D company focusing on open-source design of low-cost advanced electric propulsion systems for the small sat market, as well as research, academic, and enthusiast sectors.

In the field of electric spacecraft propulsion, AIS has already developed the AIS-gPPT3, a pulsed plasma thruster suitable for integration with pocketqube-scale spacecraft, as a low-cost demo thruster payload for teams to begin exploring the use and control of thrusters in orbit. Two of these thrusters are due to fly on a collaborative demonstrator mission between AIS, AMSAT-Spain, Fossa Systems, and the Libre Space Foundation on the AMSAT EA GENESIS-L/N pocketqubes NET April 2020. AIS has since expanded into developing advanced low-cost high performance ionic liquid ion source electrospray thrusters for nanosatellites.