Plasma Diagnostic and Performance of a Permanent Magnet Hall Thruster.pdf

PLASMA DIAGNOSTIC AND PERFORMANCE OF A PERMANENT MAGNET HALL THRUSTER José Leonardo Ferreira, Jo?o Henrique Campos de Souza, Israel da Silveira Rêgo and Ivan Soares Ferreira Laboratório de Plasmas, Instituto de Física, Universidade de Brasília-UnB 70910-900 Brasilia-DF, Brazil Abstract Electric propulsion is now a successful method for primary propulsion of deep space long duration missions and for geosyncronous satellite attitude control. Closed Drift Plasma Thruster, so called Hall Thruster or SPT (stationary plasma thruster) was primarily conceived in USSR (the ancient Soviet Union) and since then, it has been developed by space agencies, space research institutes and industries in several countries such as France, USA, Israel, Russian Federation and Brazil. In this article, we present the main features of the Permanent Magnet Hall Thruster (PMHT) developed at the Plasma laboratory of the University of Brasilia. The idea of using an array of permanent magnets, instead of an electromagnet, to produce a radial magnetic field inside the cylindrical plasma drift channel of the thruster is very significant, specially because of the possibility of developing a Hall Thruster with power consumption low enough to be used in small and medium size satellites. Descriptions such as the plasma density, temperature space profiles inside and outside the thruster channel, ion temperature measurements based on Doppler broadening of spectral lines and ion energy measurements are shown for different plasma production regimes, the space plasma potential, the measured propulsion and power consumption are shown through the paper. We also compare our data with the results reached by other types of thrusters. Finally, some of the most significant events on the evolution of the electric propulsion and their contributions to the progress on the space missions are reviewed. I. INTRODUCTION Space exploration is closely tied to the rocket engines developm