Gas-Fed Pulsed Plasma Thrusters: Fundamentals, Characteristics and Scaling Laws

This final report presents the results of a three-year theoretical and experimental investigation into the fundamentals of gas-fed pulsed plasma thrusters GF-PPTs. The primary goals were to deepen the basic understanding of how the performance of these devices can be optimized and scaled down to low pulse energies for application as efficient high-specific electric thrusters on small spacecraft. This final report gives a detailed overview of previous research, discusses the electromagnetic nature of the acceleration process, the effect of capacitance, electrode geometry, inductance-per-unit length, and discharge initiation on performance, and presents theoretically derived and experimentally verified performance scaling laws.