Outer solar system missions will have propulsion system lifetime requirements well in excess of that which can be satisfied by ion thrusters utilizing conventional hollow cathode technology. To satisfy such mission requirements, other technologies must be investigated. One possible approach is to utilize electrodeless plasma production schemes. Such an approach has seen low power application less than 1 kW on earth-space spacecraft such as ARTEMIS which uses the rf thruster the RIT 10 and deep space missions such as MUSES-C which will use a microwave ion thruster. Microwave and rf thruster technologies are compared. A microwave-based ion thruster is investigated for potential high power ion thruster systems requiring very long lifetimes.


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    Title :

    Microwave ECR Ion Thruster Development Activities at NASA Glenn Research Center


    Contributors:

    Publication date :

    2002


    Size :

    18 pages


    Type of media :

    Report


    Type of material :

    No indication


    Language :

    English




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