Performance of an 8 kW Hall Thruster
Abstract
For the purpose of either orbit raising and/or repositioning the Hall thruster must be capable of delivering sufficient thrust to minimize transfer time. This coupled with the increasing on-board electric power capacity of military and commercial satellites, requires a high power Hall thruster that can provide high thrust for orbit transfer in addition to high Isp for station keeping. To satisfy these requirements, Busek Co. embarked on the development of a novel, high power Hall thruster, capable of efficient operation over a broad range of Isp and thrust. We call such a thruster the bi-modal Hall thruster. For bi-modal operation the thruster, while operating at constant power, should deliver continuously increasing thrust with decreasing Isp. Ideally, the Isp ratio of the two modes should exceed two. The Busek Co. Inc., in a SBIR program sponsored by the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) designed, constructed and tested an 8 kW thruster and associated high power cathode designated BHT-8000 and EHC-500, respectively. The thruster/cathode assembly was successfully tested in its baseline configuration in Busek's cryogenically pumped (T8) test facility. This paper describes the performance of that thruster, paying particular attention to the plasma behavior outside the discharge cavity. At 8 kW and 300 V discharge the thruster-delivered 512 mN thrust at 63.5% anode efficiency and 2024 sec anode I(sub sp). A simple performance predicting model, applicable to all sizes and types of Hall thrusters also is presented. It adequately correlates the measured thrust and Isp expressed in terms of two loss parameters, primary electron and voltage loss.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jan 12, 2000
- Accession Number
- ADA397862
Entities
People
- B. Pote
- J. Monheiser
- V. Hruby