One thruster, built stage by stage, plus the tools we use to understand it.
Plasma Source · Electron source
A heaterless, insertless hollow cathode adapted from the microplasma design of Gott and Xu. A tungsten pin inside a quartz tube emits electrons by field emission and ignites an argon plasma, which stepwise ionization then sustains. Shown here: first ignition.
Technical details
Discharge Chamber · Propellant ionization
An aluminum chamber ringed with magnets that keep cathode electrons off the walls, so each one ionizes more argon. Now at version 1.4, with magnetic field and structural simulations run in Ansys.
See the designAll subteams
Our first thruster. Electrons from the hollow cathode ionize argon in the discharge chamber, and two biased grids extract and accelerate the ions into a beam. Each stage is developed by its own subteam through a staged design review process.
How it works
Plasma Source · Simulation
Field-emission models, a stepwise ionization solver for argon, and renders and interactive views of the results. This year the team is writing a research paper on ion kinetics: simulating stepwise ionization of argon in the cathode discharge.
Learn moreOur first prototype was an ionic wind thruster driven by corona discharge in air. It taught us early lessons about arcing, electrode spacing, and oxidation.
Read about it