Description
The objective of this activity is to extend the thruster lifetime and optimise the operating point of the thruster and to develop afinite element model of the grids system together with the plasma in between to allow health checks.Targeted Improvements:- 20%increase in thruster lifetime.- 20% decrease of grid thruster failure probability (erosion).Description: Telecom platforms couldbenefit from gridded ion thrusters in the near future, but currently lifetime is limited by erosion of the thruster grid. Grid erosioncould be better controlled, however techniques such as measurement of the impedance between grids are not yet implemented. Researchwork has shown that monitoring this parameter, the thruster operating point could be adjusted and could allow the reduction of the thruster degradation and increase the thruster lifetime.The goal of this activity is to develop an in-flight impedance measurement concept that can be integrated within Power Processing Units (PPU). A model of the grid impedance will be developed, and an ion thruster grid impedance measurement device Engineering Model (EM) will be designed, manufactured and tested. The EM shall be operationalfor European thruster technologies covering all the power ranges. It should be compatible with DC voltage of minimum 1800 V betweenpositive grid and neutraliser/cathode reference potential node and minimum 700 V (absolute value) between negative grid and neutraliser/cathode reference potential node, i.e. 2500 V between both grids. The EM developed shall tested in an electric propulsion testcampaign with a real gridded ion thruster.