The Erosion Prediction Impact on Current Hall Thruster Model Development

The past ten years have seen a rapid increase in interest in high specific impulse thrusters which can deliver very high payload mass fractions compared to chemical thrusters. One such choice, the Hall thruster, is gaining ground due to its relative simplicity and commercial availability. In order to accomplish high impulse missions however, these low thrust devices must successfully operate for thousands of hours. To help offset the enormous cost of extended ground testing, a variety of modeling efforts is underway. The goal of this paper is to overview the past and present of Hall thruster model development and to highlight three areas of research: improved sputtering models, uniform availability of magnetic field data and anomalously high electron mobility, which have each individually shown promise towards improving the predictive capability of these modeling efforts.

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