Study of multi-cusped plasma thruster applied to Air-Breathing Electric Propulsion

Atmosphere-Breathing Electric Propulsion (ABEP) is a unique propulsion concept, it uses atmosphere molecules as propellant and becomes a promising technique to solve the lifetime problems in the super low orbit. A Multicusped field thruster MCFT-2139 is designed and a nitrogen ignition experiment is conducted to evaluate the feasibility of this technology. The thruster could operate in an extremely large power range from 6 x 10-2 W to 1.3 x 103 W. In the 1.06 mg/s anode flow rate and 1000V anode voltage condition, the thrust reaches 13.3 mN and the thruster anode power is 997 W. All these performance characteristics indicate that the Multi-cusped plasma thruster is a promising thruster for the application of ABEP.