A Faraday probe with three concentric rings was designed and fabricated to assess the effects of gap width and probe geometry in a systematic study of the Hall thruster plume. The nested Faraday probe consisted of two concentric collector rings and an outer guard ring, which enabled simultaneous current density measurements on the inner and outer collector. Two versions of the outer collector w...

The flowfield of a magnetoplasmadynamic thruster was simulated numerically and the results compared to experimental measurements, in order to validate the code and obtain insight into underlying physical processes. The thruster chosen was the full-scale benchmark thruster, because it has been the subject of many experimental studies. The parallelized axi-symmetric code featured detailed physica...

We have designed and realised a micromachined micro Coriolis flow sensor for the measurement of hydrazine (N2H4, High Purity Grade) propellant flow in micro chemical propulsion systems. The sensor should be able to measure mass flow up to 6 mg/s for a single thruster or up to 24 mg/s for four thrusters. The sensor will first be used for measurement and characterisation of the micro thruster sys...

A novel multi-mode spacecraft propulsion concept is presented. The concept combines chemical monopropellant and electric pulsed inductive thruster technology to include shared propellant and shared conical nozzle. Geometry calculations show that existing conical pulsed inductive thruster experiments are typical of large (1000-4000 N) chemical monopropellant thruster nozzles. Performance and pro...

The charge-exchange xenon (CEX) ion generated by ion thruster can backflow to the surface of spacecraft and threaten to the safety of spacecraft operation. In order to evaluate the effects of the induced plasma environment in backflow regions on the spacecraft, we designed a spherical single Langmuir probe of 5.8cm in diameter for measuring low-density plasma parameters in backflow region of io...

Presented are preliminary measurements of near-cathode ion velocity distributions using time-resolved laser induced fluorescence. Two experiments were performed. First, time-averaged velocity distributions were measured in a LaB6 hollow cathode plume under the influence of a Hall thruster magnetic field provided by the 6-kW H6 thruster. The discharge was sustained without a downstream anode but...

We study orbital dynamics of a compound solar sail, namely, a Simple Solar Photon Thruster and compare its behavior to that of a common version of sailcraft. To perform this analysis, development of a mathematical model for force created by light reflection on all sailcraft elements is essential. We deduce the equations of sailcraft’s motion and compare performance of two schemes of solar propu...

Particle-in-cell simulation of Hall thruster plasmas reveals a plasma-sheath instability manifesting itself as a rearrangement of the plasma sheath near the thruster channel walls accompanied by a sudden change of many discharge parameters. The instability develops when the sheath current as a function of the sheath voltage is in the negative conductivity regime. The major part of the sheath cu...

Multiscale Modeling of Hall Thrusters Hall thrusters are efficient space propulsion devices that produce thrust by accelerating quasineutral plasma. The thruster consists of a channel with one end open to the ambient environment. The neutral propellant is injected at the closed end and is ionized by electrons produced by an externally mounted cathode. A radial magnetic field is applied across t...