Experimental study of 10 cm ion thruster using simulated environmental gas working matter

Air breathing electric propulsion technology is a type of in situ resource utilizing spacecraft power technology. It can reduce the launching cost and increase the spacecraft’s lifetime, and has broad application prospects. Environmental gas electric thrusters have low efficiency compared with traditional Xe thrusters. The electric thruster’s efficiency is seen as the most important factor determining whether the ABEP technology is feasible. In this work, a 10 cm Kaufman electric thruster was used for experimental study with environmental gas working matter, and the hollow cathode used Xe propellant. The dependency of the thruster’s efficiency on the mass flow rate, screen grid voltage and anode voltage was studied. The variation of the hollow cathode anode voltage with time in the environmental gas was also studied. The obtained results indicate that the Kaufman electric thruster has relatively high efficiency with environmental gas and is suitable for ABEP technology, and the variation of the electric thruster’s efficiency can be used as a reference for thruster optimization. Over the time scale of 2000 h, the performance of the hollow cathode was stable and could be used for in-orbit demonstration.