Hall thrusters are an efficient kind of electric propulsion used in orbit, and they need to be large to produce a lot of thrust. Things are going to change with the new study from the University of Michigan, as reported by PhysOrg.
The study suggests that smaller Hall thrusters can generate more thrust, which makes them an excellent propulsion for interplanetary missions.
Over the years, it's been believed that you could only push a specific amount of current through a thruster area that translates into the amount of force or thrust you can generate per unit area.
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The Study
The research team ran a 9-kilowatt Hall thruster up to 45 kilowatts, maintaining around 80 percent of its nominal efficiency. This resulted in an increased amount of force generated per unit area by almost a factor of ten.
Electric propulsion is still the best for interplanetary trade. However, while Hall thrusters are a well-proven technology, a mangetoplasmadynamic thruster is a potential alternative concept. A mangetoplasmadynamic thruster can pack much more power into smaller engines, but they are still unproven in many ways.
It is also believed that Hall thrusters are unable to compete because of how they operate. The propellant moves through a cylindrical channel where it is booked by a powerful electric field. Then, it generates thrust in the forward direction as it departs out the back. Before the propellant can be boosted, it needs to lose some electrons to give it a positive charge.
The electrons booted by a magnetic field to run in a ring around that channel can knock electrons off the propellant atoms and turn them into positively-charged ions. However, the calculations suggested that a Hall thruster tried to drive more propellant through the engine, the electrons in a ring would get knocked out of the formation. The engine will also become super hot.
The thruster was named H9 Muscle because they took the H9 thruster and made a muscle car out of it.
The team addressed the heat problem by cooling it with water. The H9 MUSCLE ran up to 37.4 kilowatts with an overall efficiency of about 49 percent. Then they ran with krypton and maxed out the power supply at 45 kilowatts. Its overall efficiency of 51 percent achieved the maximum thrust of about 1.8 Newtons.
Still, the team wants to pursue the cooling problem and the challenges in the development of Hall thrusters and magnetoplasmadynamic thrusters on Earth.
If everything goes well, a small Hull thruster may be used for interplanetary missions instead, which will be a breakthrough in the space industry.
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