Plasma plume diagnostics of low power stationary plasma thruster (SPT-20M8) with collisional radiative model

Abstract

Electric propulsion offers higher specific impulse compared to the chemical propulsion systems. It reduces the overall propellant mass and enables high operational lifetimes. Scientific Technological Center of Space Power and Energy (STC SPE), KhAI is involved in designing, manufacturing and testing of stationary plasma thrusters (SPT). Efforts are made to perform plasma diagnostics with corona and collisional radiative models (C-R model), as expected corona model falls short below 4 eV because of the heavy particle collisions elimination, whereas the C-R model’s applicability is confirmed. Several tests are performed to analyze the electron temperature at various operational parameters of thruster like discharge voltage and mass flow rate. SPT-20M8 far and near-field plumes diagnostics are performed. Feasibility of C-R model by comparing its result to optical emission spectroscopy (OES) to investigate the electron temperature is validated with the probe measurements within the 10% of discrepancy.