Award Data

"The need for low mass, cost and complexity electric propulsion systems driven by the growing interest in microsatellites to perform high delta-V missions requiring north/south station keeping, orbit transfer, inclination changes and precise formationflying can be enabled by Busek's multi-mode low power Hall thruster. However, state-of-the-art electric propulsion technology is complex and costly ...

"Busek's tandem Hall thruster can deliver precisely controllable, repetitive or single impulse bits of arbitrary magnitude, the latter dictated by the duration of the discharge pulse. To fully capitalize on the pulsed operation of a Hall thruster requiresa cathode capable of rapid starting to minimize the time from the command for thrust to the time the discharge pulse can be initiated. The most ...