An experimental study of a 13-cm diameter ring-cusp ion thruster using xenon as a propellant is described. The laboratory model is the thruster with the designed thrust of 20 mN and specific impulse of 3800 sec at the exhaust beam energy of 1.2 keV. We have operated the thruster, which is influenced by a magnetic configuration in a discharge chamber and an ion extraction assembly. The behavior of a discharge plasma in a ring-cusp magnetic field is of principal interest. It is also of importance for the interpretation of experiments. As the performance of the lavaratory model, an ion beam production cost for nominal operation of 240 eV/ion is attained at a propellant utilisation efficiency of 90 % and a discharge voltage and current are 36 V and 2.3 A at that time.
Investigation on a 13-cm xenon cusp ion thruster
Untersuchungen ueber einen Schubverstaerker mit 13 cm Xenon-Ionisierungsspitze
AIAA-Papers ; May ; 1-8
1987
8 Seiten, 12 Bilder, 2 Tabellen, 11 Quellen
Conference paper
English
Investigation on a 13-cm xenon cusp ion thruster
AIAA | 1987
|Ion beam production cost of a xenon cusp ion thruster
Tema Archive | 1987
|Ion beam production cost of a xenon cusp ion thruster
AIAA | 1987
|