A concept of the perch landing assisted by thruster (PLAT) for a fixed wind aircraft is proposed in this paper. The proposed concept is applicable to relatively large unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), hence can overcome the limitation of existing perch landing technologies. A planar rigid body motion of an aircraft with aerodynamic and thruster forces and moments is modeled. An optimal control pr...

Thruster failures historically account for a large percentage of failures that have occurred on orbit. These failures are typically handled through redundancy, however, with the push to using smaller, less expensive satellites in clusters or formations there is a need to perform thruster failure recovery without additional hardware. This means that a thruster failure may cause the spacecraft to...

This paper reports an experimental investigation of the effect of two specific errors on a class of model based controllers for the low-speed maneuvering of fully actuated underwater vehicles. First, we review previously reported studies and a commonly accepted simplified plant model that has been experimentally validated for this class of vehicles. Second, we review a family of associated mode...

A variation of a hanging pendulum thrust stand capable of measuring the performance of an electric thruster operating in the vertical orientation is presented. The vertical orientation of the thruster dictates that the thruster must be horizontally offset from the pendulum pivot arm, necessitating the use of a counterweight system to provide a neutrally stable system. Motion of the pendulum arm...

Development of alternative propellants for Hall thruster operation is an active area of research. Xenon is the current propellant of choice for Hall thrusters, but can be costly in large thrusters and for extended test periods. Condensible propellants may offer an alternative to xenon, as they will not require costly active pumping to remove from a test facility, and may be less expensive to pu...

Development of alternative propellants for Hall thruster operation is an active area of research. Xenon is the current propellant of choice for Hall thrusters, but can be costly in large thrusters and for extended test periods. Condensible propellants may offer an alternative to xenon, as they will not require costly active pumping to remove from a test facility, and may be less expensive to pu...

Hall thrusters are an attractive form of electric propulsion that are being cleveloped to replace chemical systems for many on orbit propulsion tasks on communications satellites. A major concern in the use of these devices is the possible damage their plumes may cause to the host spacecraft. In this paper, the present status of computer modeling of Hall thruster plumes is reviewed in the conte...