Advanced Propulsion Benefits to New Millennium Class Missions

With NASA's current emphasis on a smaller, better, faster approach to planetary exploration, a new class of mission has been proposed called New Millennium. This class of mission encompasses solar system science that can be done with scientific payloads ranging from 10kg to 50kg, and launched on Med-Lite or smaller expendable launch vehicles (ELVs). The Advanced Space Analysis Office and the Space Propulsion Technology Division at NASA Lewis Research Center performed a study to assess the ability of advanced space propulsion technologies to enable challenging New Millennium mission to the solar system that would not be possible with existing chemical propulsion technology. This paper briefly reviews the technologies and analysis techniques in the study, and presents system trade results for a broad range of missions.