Low Mass Vacuum Arc Thruster System for Station Keeping…低质量真空电弧推进器系统保持车站.pdfVIP

Low Mass Vacuum Arc Thruster System for Station Keeping Missions *† Jochen Schein, Niansheng Qi, Robert Binder, Mahadevan Krishnan Alameda Applied Sciences Corp, 2235 Polvorosa Ave, San Leandro, CA 94577, (510) 483-4156 schein@aasc.net John K. Ziemer, James E. Polk NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, 4800 Oak Grove Drive, Pasadena, CA 91109, (818) 354-9275 james.e.polk@jpl.nasa.gov André Anders Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, 1 Cyclotron Road, Berkeley, CA 94720, (510) 486-6745 aanders@lbl.gov IEPC-01-228 A vacuum arc thruster (VAT) in combination with an innovative inductive energy storage power processing unit (PPU) has been developed for microspacecraft propulsion. The VAT can be operated with a variety of materials, each of which provides ions with a different specific impulse ranging from 1100s for Ta to close to 3000s for Al. Initiation of the arc requires only a few hundred volts due to the innovative ‘triggerless’ approach in which a conductive layer between the cathode and the anode produces the initial charge carriers needed for plasma production. The initial starting voltage as well as the energy to operate the vacuum arc is generated by a low mass (300 g) inductive energy storage PPU, which can be controlled with TTL level signals. Calculations have shown that the expected thrust efficiency can reach up to 18µN/W for tungsten. The VAT has been tested at JPL to verify t