Extensive resources have been allocated to diagnose and minimize lifetime-limiting factors in gridded ion thrusters. While most of this effort has focused on grid erosion, results from wear tests indicate that discharge cathode erosion may also play an important role in limiting the lifetime of ring-cusp ion thrusters proposed for future large flagship missions. The detailed characterization of...

Plasma plume will be produced and arrive at spacecraft when the electric thruster operates on orbit. It’s important to characterize the thruster plasma parameters because the plume has significant effects or hazards on spacecraft sub-systems and parts. Through the ground test data of the desired parameters, the major characteristics of the thruster plume will be achieved. Also it is very import...

While preliminary experiments with a cluster of four Busek 200-Watt (BHT-200-X3) Closed Drift Hall thrusters indicate reasonable performance scalability from single thruster experiments, cluster plume interactions are believed to give rise to an increased ion energy spectrum as well as cross-talk and synchronization between the thruster discharges. Recent experiments with a higher power cluster...

The design and fabrication of a newly proposed vaporizing liquid micro-thruster concept i s described. The intended purpose of this thruster concept is for use as an attitude control device o n new generat ions of very small spacecraft envisioned by the Nat ional Aeronaut ics and Space Administration (NASA), ranging in mass between 1 20 kg. The vaporizing liquid micro-thruster concept heavily r...

The results of 3D, single particle electron trajectory calculations are presented for the near-field of a laboratory E ×B Hall plasma thruster. For a prescribed static magnetic and electric field distribution, single electrons are launched and tracked from a simulated cathode. Collisions with external thruster surfaces are accounted for; however, field fluctuations are disregarded. Bulk statist...

The onset voltage of a colloid thruster is an important parameter in the design of micromachined thrusters. Because dimensions in MEMS thrusters are in the range of several tens of micrometers and because extractor electrodes can be only 5 μm from the capillary emitters, the aspect ratios for MEMS thrusters are much lower than the one of individual stainless steel or silica glass needles. There...

The Helicon Double Layer Thruster, a new magnetoplasma thruster that accelerates ions to supersonic velocities using a current-free electric double layer, has been tested successfully for the first time inside a space-simulation vacuum chamber. Using a retarding field energy analyzer, the presence of a current-free double layer and the associated ion beam in argon have been confirmed for operat...

Various methods for accurately determining ion species' current fractions using E x B probes in Hall thruster plumes are investigated. The effects of peak broadening and charge exchange on the calculated values of current fractions are quantified in order to determine the importance of accounting for them in the analysis. It is shown that both peak broadening and charge exchange have a signific...

ABSTRACT The design of the magnetic field is crucial to performance hall thruster. This paper investigates effects on discharge characteristics low-power thruster in method combining simulation and experiment. Based a 40-mm-diameter (LHT-40) operating with hundreds Watts, two-dimensional axisymmetric model established fluid investigate mechanism, how influences thruster, experiments are also ca...

This paper reports two speci c improvements in the nite-dimensional nonlinear dynamical modeling of marine thrusters. Previously reported four-quadrant models have employed airfoil theory considering only axial uid ow and using sinusoidal lift/drag curves. First, we present a thruster model incorporating the e ects of rotational uid velocity and inertia on thruster response. Second, we report a...