Analysis of Numerical Simulation Results of LIPS-200 Lifetime Experiments

Accelerator grid structural and electron backstreaming failures are the most important factors affecting the ion thruster’s lifetime. During the thruster’s operation, Charge Exchange Xenon (CEX) ions are generated from collisions between plasma and neutral atoms. Those CEX ions grid’s barrel and wall frequently, which cause the failures of the grid system. In order to validate whether the 20 cm Lanzhou Ion Propulsion System (LIPS-200) satisfies China’s communication satellite platform’s application requirement for North-South Station Keeping (NSSK), this study analyzed the measured depth of the pit/groove on the accelerator grid’s wall and aperture diameter’s variation and estimated the operating lifetime of the ion thruster. Different from the previous method, in this paper, the experimental results after the 5500 h of accumulated operation of the LIPS-200 ion thruster are presented firstly. Then, based on these results, theoretical analysis and numerical calculations were firstly performed to predict the on-orbit lifetime of LIPS-200. The results obtained were more accurate to calculate the reliability and analyze the failure modes of the ion thruster. The results indicated that the predicted lifetime of LIPS-200’s was about 13218.1 h which could satisfy the required lifetime requirement of 11000 h very well.