Optical Emission Characterization of High-power Hall Thruster Wear
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چکیده
Optical emission spectroscopy is employed to correlate BN insulator erosion with highpower operation of the NASA 300M Hall-effect thruster. Actinometry leveraging excited xenon states is used to normalize the emission spectra of ground state boron as a function of thruster operating condition. Trends in the strength of the boron signal are correlated with thruster power, discharge voltage, discharge current and magnetic field strength. The boron signals are shown to trend with discharge current and show weak dependence on discharge voltage. The trends are consistent with data previously collected on the NASA 300M and NASA 457M thrusters but are different from conventional wisdom.
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تاریخ انتشار 2013