What We Have Learned By Studying The P5 Hall Thruster

Abstract

The Hall thruster is an advanced spacecraft propulsion system that uses electrical power provided by the spacecraft to generate thrust by ionizing and accelerating ions to high velocities. While Hall thrusters have been tested in laboratories for nearly forty years and first flew in space some thirty years ago, little is known about the plasma within these devices. This lack of knowledge has led to the expensive trial‐and‐error approach practiced in Hall thruster development over the years. The difficulty in collecting interior plasma data stems from the intense heat flux a probe receives. While optical measurements can give some information about the plasma, probes provide data about the plasma that are not accessible with optical approaches. Discharge channel plasma data are vital for extending our understanding of Hall thruster physical processes, for validating thruster models, and for developing advanced, next‐generation engines for high ΔV missions. The paper summarizes the results of research aimed at using probes to characterize the internal plasma structure of a laboratory Hall thruster developed specifically for this purpose. Internal plasma parameter measurements were accomplished by using the unique High‐speed Axial Reciprocating Probe (HARP) system, which enabled, for the first time, the insertion and removal of probes from the Hall thruster discharge channel while minimizing perturbation to thruster operation. The system was used with an emissive probe to map plasma potential, and a double Langmuir probe to map electron temperature and ion number density. Thruster perturbation, determined by monitoring discharge current, was less than 10% for the majority of measurements. © 2003 American Institute of Physics