Understanding Spacecraft Systems
The engineering of spacecraft — the subsystems and components that make a machine work in space for years without repair. Built on real NASA and ESA engineering; nothing is fabricated.
Related entities
- Spacecraft subsystem
Electrical Power
The subsystem that generates, stores, and distributes electricity — from solar arrays or radioisotope generators, through batteries, to every instrument and heater on board.
- Spacecraft component
Ion Thruster
A gridded electrostatic thruster that ionises a propellant (usually xenon) and accelerates it with electric-field grids to very high exhaust velocity. It delivers tiny thrust but sips fuel, enabling missions like Deep Space 1 and Dawn.
- Spacecraft component
Reaction Wheel
A spinning flywheel that a spacecraft speeds up or slows down to rotate itself, by conservation of angular momentum, without using any propellant — the workhorse of precise pointing.
- Spacecraft component
Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator (RTG)
A nuclear power source that converts the heat of decaying plutonium-238 directly into electricity. RTGs let missions operate far from the Sun or through the lunar night — powering Voyager, Cassini, and the nuclear Mars rovers Curiosity and Perseverance (the earlier rovers were solar-powered).