The high performance ion thruster technology presented is suitable for either geostationary satellite north-south stationkeeping or interplanetary spacecraft primary propulsion. The thruster employs a ring-cusp magnetic field arrangement for plasma confinement, incurring an ion production cost which at about 100 eV/ion, is approximately half the value for the state-of-the-art J-series mercury ion thruster. A comparison of the average plasma properties existing within the ion-production volumes indicates that the improved performance of the ring-cusp configuration is due to higher electron temperature, confirming the superiority of this design in confining the energetic electrons emitted by the cathode.


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    Title :

    Ring-cusp ion thrusters


    Contributors:

    Conference:

    International Electric Propulsion Conference ; 1984 ; Tokyo, Japan


    Publication date :

    1984-01-01


    Type of media :

    Conference paper


    Type of material :

    No indication


    Language :

    English





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