Zolotukhin Denis B, Bandaru Siva Ram Prasad, Daniels Keir P, Beilis Isak I, Keidar Michael
George Washington University, 800 22nd Street Northwest, Washington, DC 20052, USA.
Tomsk State University of Control Systems and Radioelectronics, 40 Lenin Ave., Tomsk 634050, Russia.
Sci Adv. 2022 Sep 9;8(36):eadc9850. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.adc9850. Epub 2022 Sep 7.
Electric propulsion has become popular nowadays owing to the trend of miniaturizing the size and mass of satellites. However, the main drawback of the most popular approach-Hall thrusters-is that their efficiency and thrust-to-power ratio (TPR) markedly deteriorate when its size and power level are reduced. Here, we demonstrate an alternative approach-a minute low-power (<50 W), lightweight (~100 g), two-stage propulsion system. The system is based on a micro-cathode vacuum arc thruster with magnetoplasmadynamic second stage (μCAT-MPD), which achieves the following parameters: a thrust of up to 1.7 mN at a TPR of 37 μN/W and an efficiency of ~50%. A μCAT-MPD system, in addition to "traditional" inverse, displays the anomalous direct (growing) "TPR versus specific impulse " trend at high values and allows multimodality at high efficiency.
由于卫星尺寸和质量小型化的趋势，电推进如今已变得流行起来。然而，最常用的方法——霍尔推进器的主要缺点是，当尺寸和功率水平降低时，其效率和推力功率比（TPR）会显著下降。在此，我们展示了一种替代方法——一种微小的低功率（<50W）、轻型（~100g）的两级推进系统。该系统基于带有磁等离子体动力学第二级的微阴极真空电弧推进器（μCAT-MPD），其实现了以下参数：在TPR为37μN/W时推力高达1.7mN，效率约为50%。一个μCAT-MPD系统，除了“传统的”反比关系外，在高值时还显示出异常的直接（增长的）“TPR与比冲”趋势，并允许在高效率下实现多模态。
