TESSX: A Mission for Space Exploration with Tethers

Tethers offer significant potential for substantially increasing payload mass fraction, increasing spacecraft lifetime, enhancing long-term space travel, and enabling the understanding and development of gravity-dependent technologies required for Moon and Mars exploration. The development of the Tether Electrodynamic Spin-up and Survivability Experiment (TESSX) will support applications relevant to NASA's new exploration initiative, including: artificial gravity generation, formation flying, electrodynamic propulsion, momentum exchange, and multi-amp current collection and emission. Under the broad term TESSX, we are currently evaluating several different tether system configurations and operational modes. The initial results of this work are presented, including hardware development, orbital dynamics simulations, and electrodynamics design and analysis.