Design and development of a flight-model cold gas propulsion system

Cold gas propulsion system is one of the best choices to perform an orbit maneuver, with a small velocity change, for a microsatellite when the main criteria are simplicity, low-cost, and short time of development. The system main disadvantage may be low specific impulse which makes its application limited to low total impulse tasks. Therefore to increase the orbit altitude of a microsatellite, with a mass of less than 60 kg, for about 150 km with a velocity change slightly less than 50 m/s, cold gas propulsion system has been chosen. The system is designed to produce 1 N of thrust using N2 as propellant discharging from a nozzle located at the satellite center of mass. The system total mass is about 14 kg and it carries 5 kg of propellant in a full-composite
tank. All the different parts of the system including thruster, tank, pressure regulator, fill/vent valve, isolation valve, etc have been designed and developed and passed various functional and environmental tests to qualify the space standards. In this paper, the design and the development of the flight-model cold gas propulsion system is reviewed in brief.