A New Diagnostic Chamber for Fast Thruster Development

Harmann, Hans-Peter; Koch, Norbert; Kornfeld, Guenter

doi:10.2514/6.2005-4052

Cited by 3 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 2 publications

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“…The cylindrical test chamber has a diameter of 2.4 m and a length of 4.5 m and is equipped with cryogenic pumps [30]. The thruster was operated with the same settings as they will be on the satellite.…”

Section: Tests In a Hempt Plasma: Results And Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

An in-flight plasma diagnostic package for spacecraft with electric propulsion

et al. 2021

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The plasma diagnostics presented in this article target the plasma surrounding a spacecraft that is created by the electric thruster and its surface modifying effects. The diagnostic package includes a retarding potential analyzer, a plane Langmuir probe, and an erosion sensor. The paper describes the instrument as well as suitable test environments for mimicking the effects expected in space and shows test results. The system is to fly for the first time on the Heinrich Hertz satellite, which is scheduled to be launched in 2023. The spacecraft will be equipped with a pair of Highly Efficient Multistage Plasma Thrusters (HEMPT) and a pair of Hall thrusters for redundancy.

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Section: Tests In a Hempt Plasma: Results And Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

An in-flight plasma diagnostic package for spacecraft with electric propulsion

et al. 2021

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“…Kornfeld et al used this special magnetic field in the design of a new concept electric thruster, and it was firstly named as the high efficiency multi-stage plasma thruster (HEMPT) [1][2][3][4]. The thruster employs several permanent magnet rings to form a unique multi-cusped field [5][6][7][8]. The plasmas could be well confined by the magnetic field in a cylindrical discharge channel, and the plasma erosion rates on the channel wall could be dramatically reduced.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Magnet stage optimization of 5 kW multi-cusped field thruster

Hu¹,

Yu²,

Shen³

2020

Plasma Sci. Technol.

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The multi-cusped field thruster is a unique electric thruster device, which has many advantages such as long lifetime, large-range thrust throttling ability, high thrust density, and low mass. The thruster employs several alternating polarity permanent magnets to create a periodic magnetic field with several cusps. Previous studies have indicated that the basic ionization and acceleration processes are directly related to the electron motion behavior, which mainly depends on the magnetic field characteristics. The magnet number and magnet stage length are two key magnetic field parameters that have important effects on the thruster performances. In this paper, both the magnet number and magnet stage length parameters are studied for the optimization of a 5 kW multi-cusped field thruster. The results indicate that the three-stage thruster has a better electron confinement than the two-stage thruster. It has lower ion energy loss at the wall, and shows a higher ionization rate. Therefore, the three-stage magnetic field is a superior magnetic field configuration. Besides, the three-stage magnetic field simulation results indicate that an optimal accelerating electric field distribution and ionization region distribution could be obtained when the magnet length ratio is 78:25:20.

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