ESA Open Invitation to Tender: 1-10770
Open Date: 09/04/2021 17:01 GMT +3
Closing Date: 21/05/2021 13:00 GMT +3

To analyze and define new and advanced green propellant systems for space transportation for low and high thrust systems. To identify new green propellants together with their measure of the toxicity and characterize them.Industry, Institutions, and Academia have been requesting ESA to place more research efforts to identify and assess critical technologies for new advanced propulsive concepts: lower environmental impact, combustion at high pressure with less temperature, replacement of hydrogen-driven by a hydrocarbon-driven systems, and reduction of the costs and production systems using green technologies.Currently, toxic and carcinogenic hydrazine propellants are commonly used in space transportation propulsion systems. These propellants impose restrictive environmental hazardous development, testing, and verification restrictions that sky-rocket the production costs. In a newly upcoming horizon of more complex space transportation systems in the coming decade, the significance of greener space propulsion systems becomes very prominent. This activity encompasses the following tasks:- Analysis of the state of the art in green propellant technologies in relation with the upcoming needs of the space transportation systems. This shall cover combustion, propellant chemistry technologies, fluid management technologies. Special attention shall be placed on propellant chemistry characterisation state of the art.- Identification of a selected number of promising green space propellants targeting a selected number of space transportation missions. The identification shall be derived from the previous tasks plus the ideas about new and advanced green propellants chemical compositions for space transportation for low and high thrust systems. The requirements for the new propellant concepts shall be low toxicity, low pollution impact, good storability, wide material compatibility, low cost and good performance. The new green space propellants shall look into existing technology and technology to develop. This task shall consider the following areas: (1) low thrust, targeting launch upper stages in orbital configurations, and hypersonic propulsion for space planes. (2) high thrust for 1st and 2nd stages of launchers.- Verification and validation of selected propellant chemistry. This task comprises the simulation of the propellants (using ESPSS ESA tool) for verification purposes. It also comprises the validation of some concepts by means of some laboratory tests in relevant environment for testing key functions to be agreed with ESA.

Directorate: Directorate of Tech, Eng. Quality
Estabilishment: ESTEC
ECOS Required: No
Classified: No
Price Range: 200-500 KEURO
Contracts Officer: Maximilian Garre
Initiating Service: TEC-MPA
IP Measure: N/A
Prog. Reference: E/0901-01 – Technology Developme
Tender Type: Open Competition
Open To Tenderers From: AT+BE+CH+CZ+DE+DK+EE+EL+ES+FI+FR+GB+HU+IE+IT+LU+NL+NO+PL+PT+RO+SE
Technology Keywords: 18-A-II-Engineering Techniques / 19-A-I-Liquid Propulsion Systems / 19-B-I-Electrostatic Systems / 19-C-V-New Concepts / 19-D-I-Modelling
Products Keywords: 1-G-1-Liquid propulsion systems / 1-G-2-Storable liquid engines / 1-G-3-Cryogenic liquid engines / 1-G-4-Hydrocarbon liquid engines / 1-G-5-Solid propulsion motors