An electrodeless, pulsed, inductively coupled thruster has several advantages over current electric propulsion designs. The efficiency of a pulsed inductive thruster is dependent upon the pulse characteristics of the device. Therefore, these thrusters are throttleable over a wide range of thrust levels by varying the pulse rate without affecting the thruster efficiency. In addition, by controlling the pulse energy and the mass bit together, the ISP of the thruster can also be varied with minimal efficiency loss over a wide range of ISP levels. Pulsed inductive thrusters will work with a multitude of propellants, including ammonia. Thus, a single pulsed inductive thruster could be used to handle a multitude of mission needs from high thrust to high ISP with one propulsion solution that would be variable in flight. A conical pulsed inductive lab thruster has been built to study this form of electric propulsion in detail. This thruster incorporates many advantages that are meant to enable this technology as a viable space propulsion technology. These advantages include incorporation of solid state switch technology for all switching needs of the thruster and pre-ionization of the propellant gas prior to acceleration. Pre-ionizing will significantly improve coupling efficiency between drive and bias fields and the plasma. This enables lower pulse energy levels without efficiency reduction. Pre-ionization can be accomplished at a small fraction of the drive pulse energy.


    Access

    Access via TIB

    Check availability in my library


    Export, share and cite



    Title :

    Study of Conical Pulsed Inductive Thruster with Multiple Modes of Operation


    Contributors:

    Conference:

    2008 NASA JPL - AFRL Edwards Advanced Space Propulsion Workshop (ASPW2008) ; 2008 ; Pasadena, CA, United States


    Publication date :

    2008-10-06


    Type of media :

    Conference paper


    Type of material :

    No indication


    Language :

    English




    Performance of a Conical Inductive Pulsed Plasma Thruster at Multiple Cone Angles

    Hallock, Ashley K. / Polzin, Kurt A. / Kimberlin, Adam C. | NTRS | 2012



    Status of Pulsed Inductive Thruster Research

    Hrbud, I. / LaPointe, M. / Vondra, R. et al. | British Library Conference Proceedings | 2002



    Numerical Simulations of the Pulsed Inductive Thruster

    Mikellides, P. G. / American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics / Society of Automotive Engineers et al. | British Library Conference Proceedings | 2002