Hollow cathodes serve as electron sources for the operation of electric thrusters aboard spacecraft. Conventionally, hollow cathodes utilize a heating element to raise the temperature of the electron emitting material embedded in the cathode. To simplify cathode design and operation, in recent years, heaterless cathode technology has been under development in various facilities around the world. This paper overviews the development of a low current heaterless hollow cathode, designed and produced by Rafael, and denoted the ARC-1A. The ARC-1A generates a discharge current of 0.3–1.2 A and is ignited using breakdown voltages below 400 V. Each of the development phases is elaborated upon. These phases included activities such as a technology study, the development of manufacturing processes, the study of failure modes, and performance characterization and culminated with two primary tests—a 5000 h endurance test and a 3500 cold ignition cycles test. In its current state of development, the ARC-1A proves suitable for a wide range of low power electric thrusters and was successfully coupled with two different Hall effect thrusters in a wide range of low discharge current levels (0.5–1.1 A).

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The present work describes key activities in the development campaign of the CAM200 low power Hall thruster from initial prototype testing to concurrent full performance mapping. The development program presented included proof-of-concept tests, experimental and numerical validation of physical mechanisms, wall material selection, performance testing, thruster engineering model structural, thermal and magnetic simulations followed by an engineering model production as well as full performance mapping. During the development campaign CAM200 demonstrated exceptional performance with anode specific impulse and anode efficiencies above 1500 sec and 43%, respectively, at a power level of 250 W. Future activities include thruster-cathode coupling test, full thruster unit lifetime qualification and full electric propulsion system coupling test, all part of the MEPS project, a joint European-Israeli endeavor.