During the years from 1967 - 77 the UK had a very successful programme of development for a 10 centimetre beam diameter mercury ion thruster. This work was discontinued in 1978, but as the market opportunities for such devices have improved since that date the development was restarted in 1985. Rare gas propellants rather than mercury are being used to avoid any spacecraft surface contamination problem. The performance of the UK thruster system in xenon has been found to be entirely satisfactory, and the operation appears to suffer no adverse effects from the propellant change. Performance has been mapped, both at the nominal 10 mN thrust level and at higher levels. The maximum trhust level achieved was 34,4 mN with a total power input of 930 W. This limit was set by the capability of the power supplies used to run the trhuster, rather than by the thruster itself.


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    Title :

    Performance assessment of a UK rare gas ion thruster


    Additional title:

    Leistungspruefung eines britischen Edelgas-Ionentriebwerks


    Contributors:
    Martin, A.R. (author) / Harvey, M.S. (author) / Latham, P.M. (author)

    Published in:

    AIAA-Papers ; May ; 1-12


    Publication date :

    1987


    Size :

    12 Seiten, 10 Bilder, 1 Tabelle, 6 Quellen


    Type of media :

    Conference paper


    Type of material :

    Print


    Language :

    English