Description: The objective of the BITS Phase II Extended effort is to support the integration and tests of the BITS ion electrospray propulsion protoflight hardware, delivered to NASA at the conclusion of the Phase II effort, into the NASA-GPDM bimodal propulsion system, in preparation for the test flight of the GPDM bimodal technology. This objective significantly improves upon the work performed in Phase II by getting the resulting hardware integrated into an actual flight demonstration of the bimodal propulsion technology.

Benefits: The performance and mass/volume trade-offs allowed by the bimodal propulsion system are relevant to NASA space system designs. Agile maneuvering, precision attitude control and thrusting and extended mission lifetime apply to missions in earth orbits or lunar and interplanetary space, and fractionated observatories requiring multiple platforms with good control performances. Geosciences, heliophysics, astrophysics and lunar or interplanetary exploration projects can benefit from extended mission capabilities resulting from the BITS technology.

Non-NASA space systems from commercial or government organizations, will benefit from the bimodal propulsion advantages in performance ranges, mass and volume budget savings and extended lifetime. Potential applications are numerous and include earth observation, monitoring and communication systems, satellite constellations, and robotic systems to assemble structures in space or retrieve debris.