Given paper presents the results of propellant flow ionization peculiarities study in discharge with crossed electric and magnetic fields burning different scale stationary plasma thruster (SPT) models acceleration layer shifted out thruster, namely: there were determined integral characteristics dependences total current exhausting ions from operating Krypton under operation modes. It is shown...

Hall thrusters are an attractive form of electric propulsion that are being developed and implemented to replace chemical systems for many on orbit propulsion tasks on communications satellites. One concern in the use of these devices is the possible damage their plumes may cause to the host spacecraft. Computer models of Hall thruster plumes play an important role in integration of these devic...

This paper considers the problem of a small, fixed-wing UAV equipped with a gimbaled camera autonomously tracking an unpredictable moving ground vehicle. Thus, the UAV must maintain close proximity to the ground target and simultaneously keep the target in its camera’s visibility region. To achieve this objective robustly, two novel optimizationbased control strategies are developed. The first ...

Despite some advancements in the field, Hall thrusters are still typically simulated using quasi-1D codes that assume thermalized potential along magnetic field lines and an analytical model for the cross-field mobility. In this paper, we develop methodology and present results from a Hall thruster simulation which diverges from this approach in two important aspects. First, a two-dimensional m...

The formulation and results of a 3-D discrete electron transport simulation are presented for the near-field of a laboratory E x B Hall plasma thruster. For a prescribed magnetic and electric field distribution in the near-field of a Hall thruster, a staggered leapfrog timeintegrating method is utilized to track electrons launched from a simulated cathode. Currently, inter-particle collisions a...

* Presented as Paper IEPC-01-49 at the 27 International Electric Propulsion Conference, Pasadena, CA, 15-19 October, 2001. † Copyright © 2001 by the authors. Published by the Electric Rocket Propulsion Society with permission. Modeling the Hall thruster for sputter yield prediction is of considerable interest to the electric propulsion community. This paper documents the status of a finite elem...

We present laser-induced fluorescence velocimetry measurements of the 5d[4]7/2 → 6p[3]5/2 transition for singly-charged xenon (Xe II) at 834.953 nm (vacuum) inside and in the near-field plume of a 6-kW Hall thruster. The thruster has a nominal operating discharge voltage of 300 V and a nominal anode mass flow rate of 20 mg/s. Axial velocity profiles are obtained along the centerline of the disc...

This paper addresses robust fault diagnosis of the chaser’s thrusters used for the rendezvous phase of the Mars Sample Return (MSR) mission. The MSR mission is a future exploration mission undertaken jointly by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the European Space Agency (ESA). The goal is to return tangible samples from Mars atmosphere and ground to Earth for analysis...

This paper presents a novel parasitic-insensitive switched-capacitor (PISC) sensing circuit design in order to obtain high sensitivity and ultra linearity and reduce the parasitic effect for the out-of-plane single-gimbaled decoupled CMOS-MEMS gyroscope (SGDG). According to the simulation results, the proposed PISC circuit has better sensitivity and high linearity in a wide dynamic range. Exper...