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Flight Demonstration of Electrostatic Thruster under Micro-Gravity
| Content Provider | Semantic Scholar |
|---|---|
| Author | Shin Satori I. Mae, Hiroyuki Okamoto, Hiroyuki Sugiki, Ted Mitsuteru Oaki, Yoshinori Nagata, Atsushi |
| Copyright Year | 2001 |
| Abstract | Based on a new concept, a low power electrostatic thruster is being developed for its application to 50 kg class satellite, which is named “Microwave Engine”. The proto-model (PM) of the microwave engine was manufactured and the qualification test (QT) was conducted. The estimated performances are 1250 seconds in specific impulse, 0.36mN in thrust and 10% in thrust efficiency when it is operated at 26.6W. To evaluate the feasibility of its accelerating mechanism, the flight demonstration of a plasma thruster is implemented under microgravity. The demonstrated thruster has an aperture of 19 mm in diameter. The same accelerating mechanism as Microwave Engine is applied to the plasma thruster although there is a difference in the mechanism of generating plasma. The flight demonstrator utilizes the glow discharge while the microwave discharge is applied to Microwave Engine. In this study, the thrust is estimated based on the flight path of the plasma thruster under microgravity, the swing of its pendulum under 1G and the beam theory of its copper wires. These corresponding thrusts are 0.36 mN, 0.20 mN and 0.11 mN, respectively. In addition, a series of its flight images is shown in this paper. As a result, the reasonable flight performance validates the accelerating mechanism of Microwave Engine. Introduction At the present time, there is new tendency in which a constellation of small satellites is launched into low earth orbit for their networking operations, instead of launching traditional large geostationary satellites. For this new change, the demand of low power electric propulsion system for an attitude control and station keeping of small satellites is getting larger. Based on this situation, a low power electrostatic thruster has been developed for its application to 50-100 kg class satellite, which is named “Microwave Engine”. In this mechanism, the advantage of generating plasma by microwave made the low power operation of Microwave Engine possible. This operational performance was obtained in the previous work [1,2]. In the former part of this paper the microwave engine system and the results of the qualification test are described. |
| File Format | PDF HTM / HTML |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2019&context=smallsat |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2019&context=smallsat&httpsredir=1&referer= |
| Language | English |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Article |
